*■' *i* *;r is ?it • 

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| LIBRARY OR CONGRESS. I 

to ■ — M 

1 & - -.Alas- 1 

| UNITED STATES OF AMEBIC A. | 



&& 



A CHURCH HISTORY. 



CHURCH HISTORY 



FIRST THREE CENTURIES, 



FROM THE 



THIRTIETH TO THE THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY- 
THIRD YEAR OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA: 



BY 

MILO HAHAN, D. D., 

6. mark's-in-the-bowery professor of ecclesiastical history 
in the general theological seminary, new york. 



SECOND EDITION. 

NEW YORK: 
PUBLISHED BY DANIEL DANA, JR., 

381 BROADWAY. 
1860. 



***v 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 186U, 

By Daniel Dana, Jr., 

In the Clerk's Office of the United States District Court for the Southern District of 

New York. 



NEW YORK : 

BILLIN AND BROTHER, PRINTERS, 

XX, NORTH WILLIAM ST. 



PREFACE. 



The following History is intended chiefly for the use of the 
general reader ; with a view to whom, results are given rather 
than learned disquisitions, and the references are made as far as 
possible to authorities easily accessible. 

It is hoped that it will also be found a help to young students 
and candidates for Holy Orders. In the case of such, however, 
it is taken for granted that Eusebius is close at hand ; and at 
least one good text-book such as Gieseler's Church History, which, 
especially as arranged in Smith's American Edition, is invaluable 
for its exact and copious citations, and for its excellent bibliograph- 
ical apparatus. Its principal defect is one incidental to all text- 
books; namely, that it anatomizes the body of Church History 
to the prejudice of its life — giving an aggregation of facts nicely 
arranged and labelled, instead of that living flow of events in their 
natural order by which (according to the maxim, solvitur ambu- 
lando) history explains and justifies itself. It is hoped that the 
present volume, by following as far as possible the narrative form, 
and by distinguishing the development of Church life in individuals, 
in Schools, and finally in the great Provincial Churches, will help 
to supply this deficiency, and facilitate the profoundly interesting 
and comprehensive study to which it is offered as an humble 
contribution. 

The author's obligations to the innumerable laborers who have 
preceded him in this field it would be only tedious to express. 
As Dr. Schaff, however, is one of the most recent among these, 



VI PREFACE. 

and is sometimes referred to in this volume with expressions of 
dissent from his opinions, it seems but just to bear witness to 
the high merits of his two admirable and learned works, as pre- 
senting some of the best results of modern German criticism in a 
form quite intelligible to the English reader. 

To those who understand what Church History is, no apology 
is needed for a new work on the subject. The narrative of the 
three years of the Ministry of our Lord required four men, four 
minds, and four different points of view to do justice to it, though 
written under the guidance of an infallible Inspiration. Much 
more is there room for many men, many minds, and many dif- 
ferent points of view, in a subject which covers all time, and in 
dealing with which no sort of infallibility can be decently laid 
claim to. No one book can pretend to be a History in the full 
sense of the word. The best effort, like the worst, is merely a 
History according to this man or that, according to one bias or 
another ; — as a general rule, the worst bias being that which 
makes the loudest professions of being free from bias. The fol- 
lowing work claims nothing on that score. It is written, however, 
according to the best judgment and best intentions of the author, 
with a sincere effort to state facts as they have come down to us 
from antiquity ; and as such is commended to the kind indulgence 
of the charitable reader. 



General Theological Seminary, 
New York, April 5, 1860. 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



Vll 



EMPERORS AND CHURCH TEACHERS. 


A. D. 


AFFAIRS IX CHURCH AND STATE. 


Tiberius. 33 S. Stephen. f 


30 


33 Church in Jerusalem. 


35 James (J). 




Persecution — Dispersion. 
Gospel preached in Samaria, 


37 Caligula. 




Csesarea, Cyprus, Phenice. 


The Twelve in 




(Simon Magus.) 


41 Claudius. Palestine. 


40 


44 Herod Agrippa dies. 

45 Church in Antioch. 


45 S. James the 




46 Claudius expels the Jews 


Greater, f 




from Rome. 


Barnabas, 


50 


50 Council in Jerusalem. 


54 Nero. Paul, 




Church centres established in 


Silas and others. 




Alexandria, Corinth, Ephesus, 


Linus. 62 S. James the Just.f 




Rome — (Judaizing teachers 


Cletus. 63 Symeon (J). 


60 


and Gnostics in Asia Minor, 


Clemens. S. Peter, f Anianus(A). 




Parties in Corinth, etc.) 


and S. Paul.f 




64 First Persecution. 


Euodius, ) , . v 
68 Galba. Ignatius, [ lAn) ' 






69 Otho. 






69 Vitelline. 


70 


Destruction of Jerusalem. 


69 Vespasian. 






71 S. Thomas, f 




Seven Churches of Asia, each 


73 S. Bartholomew.! 




with its Angel or Bishop. 


79 Titus. 


80 




81 Domitian. 




(Nicolaitans, Docetfe, Cerinthus, 


85 Avilius (A). 




Menander.) 


Anacletus? no A ,. , 
Evaristus? 93 ^ntipas.f 


90 


Second Persecution. 


98 Nerva. 98 Cerdo (A). 




Nerva forbids accusations of 


99Tra J- ISent^t 




slaves against their masters. 


100 


Edict against secret societies. 


Justus (J). 






S. Polycarp fl. 


110 


Third Persecution. 


117 S. Ignatius, f 




Correspondence between Pliny 


117 Hadrian. 




and Trajan. 


119 Alexander. Ammias. 




Insurrections of the Jews in 


Quadratus. 


120 


Egypt and Cyrene. 


Aristides. 






Papias. 




Fourth Persecution. 


130 Sixtus I. 




Bar Cochba's Insurrection. 


135 Marcus (J). 


130 


135 xElia Capitolina. 



U.B.— The Bishops of Rome Italics ; of Jerusalem (J) ; of Alexandria (A) ; 
of Antioch (An) ; Martyrs are distinguished by an f. 



Vlll 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



EMPERORS AND CHURCH TEACHERS. 


A. D. 


AFFAIRS IN CHURCH AND STATE. 


138 Antoninus Justin M. fl. 


140 


(Gnostic Sects and Schools.) 


Pius. 




(Basilides, Valentinus, Marcion.) 


140 Telesphorus Hegesippus fl. 


150 


(Montanus.) 


152 Hyginus. pius 2 




(Paschal Controversy.) 


154 Anicetus. 




Polycarp confers with Anicetus. 


Athenagoras. 


160 




161 Marcus An- Melito of Sar- 




Fifth Persecution. 


relius. dis. Apolli- 




Synods respecting Easter and 


173 Soter. naris. 




Montanism. 


S. Poly carp, f 


170 


The thundering Legion. 


S. Pothinus.f 




(Tatian, Bardesanes.) 


177 Meutherus. Dionysius of 




Persecutions at Lyons and 


Corinth fl. 




Vienne. Preachers sent to 


180 Commodus. 


180 


Britain. Commodus favors 


Irenseus fl. 




the Christians. 


Theophilus(An). 






189 Demetrius (A). 






Pantrenus fl. 




Pantaenus goes to India. 


192 Victor. Apollonius.f 


190 




192 Helvius Per- 




(Victor excommunicates the 


tinax. Clemens fl. 




Asiatic Churches.) 


193 DidiusJuli- 195 Narcissus(J) 




Several Synods holden. 


anus. 




197 Jews and Samaritans rebel 


194 Septimius Tertullian fl. 


200 


and are subdued. 


Severus. 202 S. Irenseusf 






197 Zcphyrinus. Origenfl. 






Minucius Felix 




202 Sixth Persecution. 


fl. 




Libelli pads. 


211 Caracalla. 


210 




212 Alexander (J). 




(Patripassian and Monarchian 


217 Callistus. 




Heretics.) 


Hippolytus fl. 






217 Macrinus. 




Ulpian the lawyer collects all the 


219 Heliogabalus. 


220 


edicts against Christians 


222 Urbanus. Julius Afri- 




and incites to persecution 


canus fl. 




in Rome. 


222 Alexander 




(Sabellius fl.) , 


Seyerus. 


230 


(New Platonic School, Plotinus.) 


230 Pontianus. 






235 Anterus. 






236 Fabiamcs. 






235 Maximums 




235 Seventh Persecution. 


Thrax. Babylas (An). 




Synod of Iconium. 


237 Gordianus — Firmilianus. fl. 


240 




238 Pupienus— 




(Origen converts Beryllus.) 


Balbinus. 







CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



IX 



EMPERORS AND CHURCH TEACHERS. 


A. D. 


AFFAIRS IN CHURCH AND STATE. 


244 Philippus Arabs. 


245 


Church in Numidia and Mauri- 
tania. 


249 Decius. Fabianus.\ 


250 


249 Eighth Persecution. 


Trajanus. Cyprian fl. 




Development of Discipline. War, 


251 Cornelius.^ Greg. Thaumat. 




Pestilence, Famine. 


252 Lucius.\ Dionysius (A). 






252 Gallus and Volusianus. 




Goths overrun Asia Minor and 


253 Stephen.^ (Novatianus.) 




Greece — Christian captives 


254 Valerianus. 257 Cyprian. f 




preach the Gospel. 


257 Sixtus II.\ 




(Baptismal Controversy.) 


259 Gallienus. (Nepos.) 




257 Ninth Persecution. 


259 Dionysius. 


260 


Valerian taken prisoner by the 
Persians. 


268 Claudius II. 




(Sabellian Controversy in Pen- 

tapolis.) 
(Three Councils of Antioch — 


269 Felix. Paul, )(\ \ 

270 Aurelian. Domnus, J ^ ^ 


270 




Paul condemned.) 


275 Tacitus. S. Antony. 




Edict of Persecution — Aurelian 


275 Futycliianus. 




slain. 


276 Florianus Methodius of 


280 


Porphyry writes against the 


Probus. Tyre. 




Christians. 


282 Carus. 






283 Cams. Lucian the M. 






284 Diocletian. 




Peace and prosperity of the 


(Era of the Martyrs.) 




Church. Splendor of 


Pamphilas of Caesarea. 


290 


Church buildings. 


287 D. and Maximian. 






294 (Constantius 




and Galerius.) 




Hierocles opposes Christianity. 


296 Marcellinus. Eusebius the 


300 


303 Edict of persecution — de- 


Ch. Historian. 




struction of the Churches. 


(Meletius.) 




Tenth Persecution. 


308 Marcellus. (Arius.) 




305 (Council of Elvira.) 


308 Maxhnin. 




, 309 Martyrs of Palestine. 


Csecilianus. 






310 Eusebius. (Donatus.) 


310 


311 Death of Galerius and Edict 


Melchiades. Peter (A).f 




of toleration. 
312 Yictory of Constantine. 


314 Sylvester. 




(Donatist troubles.) 


Alexander (A). 




313 Victory of Licinius. 


Hosius. 


320 


Edicts of restitution. 


323 Constantine sole Emperor. 




(Councils of Aries, Milan, and 
other places.) 


Athanasius. 


325 


Council of Nioea. 



1* 



CONTENTS 



BOOK I. 



CHAPTER 

I. — The Organization: — John the Baptist — Expectation of the Kingdom 

— The Kingdom preached in the Parables and in the Works of Jesus 

— Ministry organized — Prophetic, Priestly, Kingly — The Great 
Forty Days — The Ascension — The "Waiting — Matthias chosen. — 
Notes. 1. Nativity — 13. Miracles significant — 17. Kingly, Priest- 
ly, and Prophetic Ministry — 21. The Church and the Kingdom. 

1-8 

II. — The Pentecostal Gift : — Number of Disciples — Assemblage of de- 
vout Jews — Descent of the Spirit — Judaic Foundation — In Pal- 
estine and in the World at large. — Note. 2. Preparation 9-12 

III. — The Twelve in Jerusalem : — Twelve years in Jerusalem — Pentecos- 
tal Society — Dissensions — Seven Deacons — James Apostle- 
Bishop — Persecutions — Second Pentecost — Dispersion — Gos- 
pel goes forth — S. Peter's Visitation — The other Apostles. — 
Notes. 4. James of Jerusalem — 5. Presbyters 13-20 

IV. — Churches of the Gentiles: — Gentiles admitted — Csesarea — Chris- 
tians in Antioch — Other Places — Barnabas and Saul sent forth 

— Elymas — Course of the two Apostles — Council at Jerusalem — 
Second Journey, Corinth — Third Journey, Ephesus — S. Paul in 
Jerusalem, Csesarea, Rome — Persecution under Nero. — Notes. 
1. Roman Jews — 2. Therapeutse — 4. Saul's Ordination 21-33 

V. — S. Paul and his Company: — The Type of an enlarged Ministry — The 
Twelve Foundation-stones — The Seventy — S. Paul's peculiar 



XU CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER 

Mission — His Companions — Barnabas — Timothy, Titus, Luke, 
Mark — His Helpers and Successors. — Note. 4. Meaning of the 
numbers Twelve and Seventy » 33-39 

VI. — Mission of the Twelve: — The Twelve — S. James the Greater — S. 
Andrew and others — Causes of Persecution — Madness of the 
Jews and Heathen — Calamitous Times — The Jewish War — The 
Lord's Coming. — Note. 11. The Six great Judgments 39-46 

VII. — Jewish Christian Church: — Jerusalem and Christian Israel — James 
the Just — His relations to S. Paul and to his own People — Spirit 
of Judaic Christianity — End of Jame3 — Signs of Judgment — 
Successors of James — Seeds of Heresy — Jerusalem taken — 
Christians retire to Pella — Sects — Second Overthrow of the 
sacred City — JElia Capitolina. — Note. 13. The Door of Jesus. 

47-55 

VIII. — S. Peter and his Company: — S. Peter's position — His use of the 
Keys — Visits to Rome — Travels — His Gift and Influence — His 
Strength and Weakness — His Wife — S. Mark — S. Clement — 
Questions of Church Order. — Notes. 1. Petros and Pctra — 3. 
More than one Bishop in a City — 9. Peter's Wife 56-01 

IX. — S. Joxjn: — S. John the Survivor of the Twelve — In Asia — Rome — 
Patmos — Ephesus — His Character and Gift — Traditions — His 
Influence anti-Gnostic — Gospel, Epistles, Revelation — Import of 
his later Life — A critical Period of Church History — Second 
General Persecution. — Notes. 5. John's Title of " the Elder" — 6. 
The Caldron of boiling Oil 61-67 

X. — Holy Women : — The Mother of our Lord — Reserve of Holy Scrip- 
ture — Legends — Other Holy Yfoinen — S. Thecla and S. Donii- 
tilla. — Notes. 4. S. Mary not the Mother of James — 8. Virginity. 

67-71 

XI. — Church Government : — All Towers given to the Apostles as 
Brothers, Colleagues, Peers — Apostolic Aids or Fellows — Second 
Growth of the Apostolate — One College at first, then many — 
Local Ministry, Presbyters, Deacons, Deaconesses, with a Chief 
Pastor or Bishop — James an Apostle-Bishop — Charisma or Gifts 



CONTENTS. Xlll 

CHAPTER 

— Relations of the Orders — Lay Influence — Legates of the Apos- 
tles — Their Successors — The Episcopate self-perpetuating — 
Three Witnesses — Metropolitan System. — Notes. 2. German 
Views of Episcopacy — 3. Apostles and Evangelists — 6. James a 
Bishop — 13. Parity— 14. TheCharisms (Eph. iv. 12-16) — 1*7. S. 
Ignatius on the three Orders — 18. Deacons — 20. Mutual Bene- 
dictions — 25. S. Jerome's Epistle ad Nvangelum — 26. Threefold 
Episcopate 71-89 

XII. — Doctrine and Heresies : — The Gospel, Christ come in the Flesh 

— Three Drifts of Heresy — Three Types of Docirine — Harmony 
of the Apostles — Scope of Doctrinal History — Four Heads — 1. 
Oral Teaching — 2. Rule of Faith — 3. Sacred Writings — 4. 
Heresies — Gnostic — Docetae — Simon Magus, Dositheus, Menan- 
der, Nicolaitans — Sensuous Heresies, Schisms — Judaic Heresies, 
Nazarenes, Cerinthus, Ebion — Error combated in first Principles 

— The Church admitting many stand-points — Truth in Lore. — 
Notes. 5. The term " Development" — 9. The term " Rule of 
Faith" — 14. Allegorical Interpretation — 17. Meaning of Coloss. 
ii. 23 — 19. Anti-gnostic texts — 21. The term "Knowledge" in 
1 Cor. viii. — 23. The Sedition in Corinth — 24. Antijudaic texts. 

90-109 

XIII. — Rites, Observances, Morals: — In Ritual little Instruction needed — 
Baptism — Lord's Supper — Agape — Kiss of Peace — Laying on 
of Hands — Unction — Public Worship — Liturgy — Hours of 
Prayer — Fasts and Feasts — Asceticism — Morals — Social Prob- 
lems. — Note. 15. The Therapeutse opposed to slavery. . 109-115 



BOOK II. 

-Beginning of Second Century: — Seed growing in secret — S. John 
and other Witnesses — Domitian, Nerva, Trajan — Third General 
Persecution — Trajan and Pliny — Martyrs — Simeon, Justus — 
Ignatius of Antioch — His Position, Witness, and Writings. — 
Notes. 4. Pliny's Questions — 12. Zeal of Ignatius rational — 
14. Unfair Censures of S. Ignatius — 15. " Nothing without the 
Bishop." 116-130 



XIV CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER 

II. — Hadrian and the Antonines : — Progress of the Gospel — Fanaticism 
general — Hadrian in Athens — Quadratus and Aristides — Edict 
against Informers — Antoninus Pius — Marcus Aurelius — The 
Stoic Ideal — Three Types of the Age. — Notes. 1. Increase of the 
Christians — 6. Number of Martyrs — 8. Hadrian's building of 
Temples to the One God not improbable — 11. Piety of Aure- 
lius 130-139 

III. — S. Polycarp: — Church in Smyrna — Polycarp — Visit to Rome — 
The Amphitheatre — Polycarp called for — His Martyrdom — 
Honors paid him — His conservative Spirit. — Note. 8. The term 
"Atheists." 139-147 

IV. — The Ltonnese Martyrs : — Gallic Church — Christians mobbed — A 
true Paraclete — Charity of the Sufferers — Ascetic Party — Sanc- 
tus, Maturus, Attilus, Pothinus, Blandina — The New Prophets 
condemned. — Notes. 1. Foundations in Gaul — 2. The Amphi- 
theatre 147-154 

V. — Justin Martyr : — Justin in Search of Truth — His Teachers — A 
Christian Philosopher — His Conversion — His Gifts, Opinions, 
Discussions, Creed — His Companions in Martyrdom — His Dis- 
ciples. — Notes. 5. The Logos — 6. Bread and "Wine in the Mysteries 
of Mithras — 7. " Creation and Generation" — 8. Lenient Way of 
judging the Ebionites — 9. Baptism and the Eucharist 154-164 

VI. — Apologetic Age : — End of the Century — Melito and other Apologists 

— Heathen Opponents — New Platonic School — Apollonius of 
Tyana — End of the Aurelian Persecution — Commodus — Apollo- 
nius a Martyr — Septimius Severus — Sixth general Persecution 

— Seventh — Peace of thirty-eight Years — Trials from within. — 
Notes. 4. Plotinus — 5. Apollonius of Tyana — 6. Legio Fulminea 

— 7. Aurelius's Hatred of emotional Religion — 10. Evasions of 
Persecution 165-172 

VII. — Heresies and Schools: — The Church neither Jewish nor Gnostic — 
i. Judaic Sects — Clementina, Elxaites — ii. Gnosticism — General 
Account of it — iii. Gnostic Sects — Alexandrian — Syrian — Other 
Sects — iv. Manichseans — v. Sensuous Heresies — Sect Spirit — 
Spurious Writings — Chiliasm — Encratites — vi. Montanism — vii. 



t CONTENTS. XV 

CHAPTER 

Rationalist Reaction — Alogi — Monarchians — Patripassians — 
Sabellius — Beryllus — Paul of Samosata — viii. Schools within the 
Church — Rome, Alexandria, Antioch. — Notes. 2. "Bishop of Bish- 
ops" — 6. Gnostic Terms, Dualism — 11. Communism — 17. Zo- 
roaster — 22. Chiliast Fathers — 29. Anti-encratite passages — 32. 
Truth the sanctifying Power — 35. Fasts — 36. Lay Priesthood — 
50. Theological "Obstetricians" — 52. Scaffolding Theories — 54. 
Practical Sense of Tradition 1*72-207 

VIII. — Heresies, how Met: — Heresies destroyed by Disintegration — Age 
of Dialectics — Exorcism fails against the Montanists — Reason 
appealed to — "Wholesome Dread of Novelties — Scriptures studied 

— True Prophets and False — Synods — Their Necessity — Their 
conservative Influence — An Age judged by its own Trials. — 
Notes. 5. Apostolic Councils — 9. Whole Church present in Coun- 
cils 207-215 

IX. — S. Iren^etts axd his Disciples: — S. Irenseus — His Character and 
Writings — Troubles in Rome — Blastus and Florinus — The 
Marcosians — Paschal Controversy — Irenseus counsels Peace — 
Church Growth and Miracles — Caius — Hippolytus — Parties in 
Rome. — Notes. 13. Orthodoxy of Hippolytus — 14. The Callis- 
tians , .215-226 

X. — The Alexaxdrixe School: — Episcopate in Alexandria — Demetrius 

— Centre of Learning — New Platonic School — Catechetical 
School — Pantrenus — Clemens — Origen — Martyrs — Labors and 
Writings — Quarrel with Demetrius — Origen condemned — Heresy 
arrested — Influence of Origen — His Disciples and Friends. — Notes. 
5. Alexandrine Jews, Philo — 9. Athenagoras — 10. Three Works 
of Clement — 12. Clement's Orthodoxy — 16. Bodily Blemishes — 
22. The threefold Sense — 28. Paradoxes of Origen — 29. Metho- 
dius 227-243 



XVI CONTENTS. 



BOOK III. 



CHAPTER 

I. — North African Church: — North Africa — People, Morals, Religion — 
Evangelized — Church established — Scillitan Martyrs — Sensuous 
Bias — SS. Perpetua and Felicitas — Dreams, Visions — Montanism 

— Tertullian — Questions of Veils, of Crowns — Party Names — 
Tertullianists — Influence of Tertullian — A Season of Peace and 
quiet Growth. — Motes. 3. Character of the Africans — 4. Phrase 
" sine charta," etc. — 7. Opposition to the Prayer pro mora finis — 
9. Prayers for the Bead — 14. Converts among the wealthy Classes 

— IT. Tertullian's Paradoxes— 19. Absurd Sects 247-264 

II. — Carthage and S. Cyprian: — Cyprian Bishop — State of the Church 

— Virgins, Confessors, Clergy — Abuses — Mission of S. Cyprian 

— Reform — Working Forces of the Church — Balance of Powers 

— Cyprian's Policy — Examples — "Warnings of Judgment — 
Eighth general Persecution — Fabianus a Martyr — The Lapsed — 
Bad Conduct of the Confessors — Libelli Pacis — Novatus and his 
Party — Schism in Carthage — Novatian Schism in Rome — Dis- 
cipline restored and everywhere established. — Notes. 2. Primates 

— 5. Antelucan Meetings offensive — 7 and 18. Power of the Con- 
fessors — 13. Taylor's Early Christianity — 20. Mosheim's Treat- 
ment of S. Cyprian — 22. The Diptychs — 24. Visions — 25. Per- 
secutions needed — 29. Evasions — 33. Exomologesis — 40. Evil 
connected with a numerous Episcopate — 43. Novatian — 44. In- 
dulgences 264-287 

III. — Decian Times : — A great Crisis — Early Belief of the Nearness of the 
Lord's Coming justified — Martyrs — Seven Sleepers — Gregory 
the Wonder-worker — Dionysius of Alexandria — Anchorites — 
Great Plague — Inroads of Barbarians — Christian Charity — 
Ninth Persecution — Cornelius, Lucius, Origen, Stephen. — 
Note. 10. Orthodoxy of Gregory Thaumaturgus 287-299 

IV. — Rome anx> the West: — Origin of the Roman Church — First Bishops 
— Eminent Position — Centre of Good and Evil — Resort of Here- 



CONTENTS. XV11 

SAPTER 

tics — Zephyrinus and Callistus according to Hippolytus — Battle- 
Ground of two Elements — Question of the Day — Cyprian and 
Cornelius — Via media — Cyprian and Stephen — Baptismal 
Question — Case of Martialis and Basilides — of Marcianus — 
Valerian Persecution — Martyrdom of Stephen, Sixtus, Cyprian — 
Dionysius of Rome — Case of Dionysius of Alexandria — Question 
of Church property in Antioch referred to the Italian Bishops — 
Centralizing Tendency — State of the Roman Church in numbers, 
etc. — Triumph of the Cross — Donatist Schism — Its Influence 
upon the position of the Roman Church. — Notes. 1. S. Peter at 
Rome — 3-8. Expressions Relating to the Dignity of Rome — 
16. All Sinners received after Penance — 18. Three Views in the 
Early Church on irregular Baptism — 21. The term "Papa" — 
29. Dionysius as a Theologian — 33. Calculations from the Cata- 
combs — 34. The Christians not "a mere refuse" — 39. Heathen 
Catholicity — 41. Catacombs — 43. Cemetery "Worship — 46. Epis- 
copal Martyrs — 53. Arnobius — 55. The Trophy of the Cross — 
61. Council of Elvira — 62. Stratagem of Mensurius — 64. Donatist 
Succession 299-327 

V. — The Church and School of Antioch: — The East theological — 
Theophilus — Babylas — Fabius — Paul of Samosata — His Faults 
and Errors — Councils — Death of Firmilianus — Paul condemned 

— Catholic Unity — School of Antioch — Lucian and his Disciples 

— Last Persecution — Martyrdom of Lucian and others. — 
Note. 13. The term " Consubstantial." 328-336 

VI. — The Egyptian Church: — Origen's Disciples — Dionysius — Question 
of the Lapsed, of Baptism — Chiliasm, Nepos — Charity victorious 

— SabeUian Controversy — Era of the Martyrs — Meletian Schism 

— Anchorites, Hermits — S. Antony and Monachism — Martyrdom 
of Peter — Arius and Alexander. — Notes. 9-12. Orthodoxy of 
Dionysius — 15-24. S. Antony and Monasticism 337-350 

VII. — The Churches in General: — The Great Epic a Type of Church 
History — Belt of the Mediterranean — Africa — Libya — Penta- 
polis — Egypt — Arabia — Palestine — Syria — The Farther East 

— Asia Minor — Macedonia and Achaia — Italy — Spain — Gaul — 
Britain. — Notes. 3. Epochs — 14. S. James in Spain 350-363 



Xviii ' CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER 

VIII. — Church Life and Growth: — Season of Peace — Gibbon's Five Causes 
of Church Growth — The Progress of Christianity considered 
under the following heads — i. The Conflict between Truth and 
Error — ii. The "Witness of the Martyrs — iii. Signs and Wonders 

— iv. Discipline — v. Strength in Numbers — vi. Catholic Unity 
and Church Polity — vii. Church life, domestic, public — Eites — 
Customs — Heathen Point of View — Aversion to the Arts — 
Austerity — Charity — Widows, Orphans, Slaves, Captives, etc. 

— Sources of Eevenue — Simple Faith and patient Waiting. — 
Notes. 6. Reverence for Martyrs — 9. Miracles not wrought at 
random* — 19. Ignatian and Cyprianic Theories of the Episcopate 

— 22. Representative Idea in Synods — 23. Development Theory 
of Papal Supremacy — 25. Minor Orders — 27, 28. Children not 
desired — 33. Diptychs and Commemoration of the Departed — 
42. Military Service — 45. Pictures — 46. Flowers — 53-55. 
Tithes, etc. — 57. Non-resistance 364-397 

IX. — Times of Diocletian: — Prosperity of the Church — Corruptions — 
Diocletian resolves on Persecution — Destruction of the Church in 
Nicomedia — Plan of the War — Edicts — Cruelties and Atrocities 

— Number of Martyrs — Abdication of Diocletian and Maximian 

— Fate of the Persecutors — Severus — Galerius — Edict of Tole- 
ration — Maximin — Edict of Restitution — Maxentius — Max- 
imian — Diocletian and his Family. — Notes. 2. Lactantius — 
5. Hierocles — 25. Diocletian's Madness 397-416 

X. — Victory of Const antine: — Boldness of Constantine's Decision — 
Causes of his Conversion — His Vision — Trophy of the Cross in 
Rome — Real Nature of the Victory — Signs of a new Era — 
* Licinius and Constantine — Edict from Milan — War between 
the two Emperors — Persecution recommenced — Second War — 
Constantine sole Emperor — His Character and Nature of his 
Faith — Type of a new Age of Christianity. — Notes. 3. Constan- 
tine's Vision — 6. Eusebius 416-428 



BOOK I 



THE APOSTOLIC AGE, 

FROM 

JOHN THE BAPTIST TO THE SECOND 
DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM. 

4 

A. D. 30-135. 



HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. 



BOOK I. 
CHAPTEE I. 

THE ORGANIZATION. 

The history of the Church, being an account of 
the earthly growth or manifestation of God's king- 
dom, is most properly introduced by the mission of 
John the Baptist, the Forerunner of the Messiah. John the 
He came preaching the Kingdom of Heaven near runner. 
at hand. As his star declined, the theme was taken 
up by One mightier than he ; who, proclaiming the 
same tidings, sent forth His disciples two by two 
before His face, to preach to the Jews, saying, The 
kingdom of God is come nigh unto you. This pro- 
phesying continued to the close of the earthly min- 
istry of our Lord, a period of about three years. 1 

1 According to Dr. Jarvis, the ascended May 6, of 4*741, J. P. ; 

Annunciation took place in there being 33 years and about 3 

March, and the Birth of our months between the Birth and 

Lord on December 25, of the Crucifixion. See Chronological 

year 4707, J. P. ; He began His Introduction to the Hist, of the 

ministry 30 years after, January Church by the Rev. S. F. Jarvis 

6, of 4738 ; He was crucified on D. D., LL. D. For dates in this 

March 26, rose March 28, and vol. see Riddle, Ecc. Chron. 
1 



2 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. I. 

And as the Kingdom of God was the burden of all 
preaching at that time, so it was the object of uni- 
versal and earnest expectation. The Law and the 
Expecu- Prophets continued until John : but when the ful- 

tion of the -L # . - . 

Kingdom. ness f the times revealed a higher Dispensation, 2 
all men, consciously or unconsciously, were press- 
ing towards it. Among the Jews devout men were 
waiting for the Kingdom. 3 Among the Gentiles, 
Poets sang of Saturnian rule : Philosophers dreamed 
of ideal commonwealths. Wise men from the East 
came with regal gifts to the cradle of the Lord. 
Pude soldiers from the "West nocked with scribes 
and pharisees, publicans and sinners, to the baptism 
of repentance proclaimed by John the Baptist, 
parables, Our Lord Himself preached the Kingdom chiefly 
of the under the form of similitudes, or Parables. In a 
series of simple pictures, drawn from familiar scenes 
and ordinary callings, yet so nicely delineated that 
every stroke and shade has a meaning of its own, 
He left an inexhaustible treasure of the "notes," 
or prominent features of the Church. The promised 
reign was to be earthly in its position, heavenly in 
its character ; 4 it was to be established everywhere ; 5 
it was to embrace the common social mixture of 
good and evil; 8 it was to be subject to all the 
vicissitudes of natural growth and progress, 7 yet to 
vindicate its divine origin by a wondrous vitality, 8 
and power of persistence and endurance ; 9 in short, 
it was to be visible and invisible, present and 
future, natural and supernatural, a mystery, and to 

2 S. Luke, xvi. 16. c S. Matt., xiii. 26. 

3 S. Mark, xv. 43. * S. Mark, iv. 27, 28. 

4 S. John, xvii. 15, 16. s S. Mark, iv. 31, 32. 
6 S. Matt., xiii. 33. 9 S. Matt., xvi. 18. 



CH. I.] THE ORGANIZATION. 3 

some a stumbling-block, 10 till its complete and tri- 
umphant manifestation at the end of time. Our 
Lord taught more clearly, that the Head of this dis- 
pensation was to be absent in body, though present 
in spirit ; and in His absence its affairs were to be 
administered by servants, having all a charge in 
common, yet each with his own share of trust and 
responsibility. 11 

The works of Jesus, also, were evidentlv intended y° rks of 

' ' d Jesus. 

to be significant of the reign He came to establish 
among men. They were " signs " of the kingdom : 
parables in action. To the inquiry of the Baptist, 
whether the promised One had come, it was deemed 
an amply sufficient answer that " the lame walked, 
the blind saw, the deaf heard, lepers were cleansed, 
the dead were raised," and, as the crowning boon 
of all, that the poor had the Gospel preached to 
them. 11 It is not necessary to show here, how many 
of these miracles are capable of a typical, allegorical, 
or even prophetic application, foreshadowing certain 
features of the history of the Church. 13 It is enough 

10 S. Matt., xi. 6 ; S. John, ciples, which gave rise to that 
xvii. 14. beautiful and expressive symbol 

11 The parable of the pound of the heavenward-bound ship : 
indicates the common trust, that so with many other images fa- 
of the talents the different degrees miliar to readers of the early 
of responsibility. S. Luke, xix. Church fathers. Strauss, in his 
12-25 ; S. Matt., xxv. 15. famous Leben Jesu, sees only this 

12 S. Matt., xi. 3. typical character of the miracles, 
18 Thus, the two fishing scenes and therefore treats them as 

(S. Luke, v. 6, and S. John, xxi. myths. The ' early fathers saw 

11), the one before and the other the same doctrinal and prophetic 

after the Resurrection, the one significance of the miracles, but 

with a net broken from the num- were only the more convinced 

ber of fishes, the other with the thereby that they were facts, 

net unbroken, became symbols namely divine facts. For the 

of the Church militant and the more meaning a fact has in it, 

Church triumphant : so with the the more divine it is. See 01- 

two voyages of our Lord's Dis- shausen's Com. p. 856 (Am. ed.) 



4: HISTOEY OF THE CHURCH. [BK. I. 

to notice, in general, that they are miracles of 
mercy rather than of power ; and in reference to 
the office of the state, or of society, are of a com- 
plementary, not antagonistic character. They show 
that Christ came not to destroy, but to complete, 
to fill np. His kingdom " fall of grace and truth" 
was to leaven all other kingdoms ; to infuse its own 
spirit into all other organizations : but, in the mean 
time, to address itself to objects not contemplated 
in the scheme of political societies, nor indeed 
capable of being profitably undertaken by them. 
Duty to Caesar, therefore, can never interfere with 
duty to God. Between the two there is no rivalry, 
no antagonism. The kingdom, though in the world, 
is not of the world. 
His Mode Such, in substance, was the teaching of our Lord, 
ing. both in His words and works. The same comple- 
mentary character distinguished His ethical precepts, 
and discourses to the people. Not novelty, but 
harmony, completeness, and, above all, authority, 
made His words such as never man spake. As the 
great seed-sower of the kingdom, He announced 
principles rather than dogmas : principles, which 
are ever budding with new life, whose vitality is as 
vigorous and fresh now, as when it first awakened 
the dull minds of the Disciples. It may be observed 
further, that in His way of announcing these prin- 
ciples He was the model of all teachers. The ancient 
philosophers, with perhaps one exception, 14 had in 
the promulgation of high truths addressed them- 
selves exclusively to an elevated class. They had 

14 Namely, Socrates ; who was philosophy in the language of 
much ridiculed by the polished mechanics and shop-keepers. 
Athenians for clothing divine 



CH. I.] THE ORGANIZATION. 5 

affected a knowledge which could be communicated 
only to the initiated few. It was a peculiarity of 
our Lord's instructions, that while they contained 
the profoundest truths, they were couched in lan- 
guage so perfect in form, so beautiful, so simple, so 
catholic, that though an angel may fail to penetrate 
their depth, yet a child may receive them with 
delight, and draw instruction from them. There 
was, therefore, no need of the "reserve," or dis- 
cvplina arcani, affected by the philosophers. What 
was whispered in the ear was expressed in terms 
which could equally well be proclaimed from the 
house-top. 

But as our Lord preached the kingdom He pro- Ministry 

t j j ., organized. 

ceeded pan passu to prepare and organize its min- 
istry ; laying the foundation in Himself, as Prophet, 
Priest, and King, and in that chosen company of 
disciples, His "friends" and fellow-workers, who by 
faith and a special calling first became partakers of 
His life-giving nature. Himself the Pock and the 
living Stone, He made living stones of those whom 
He had enabled to confess Him. 15 This He did, 
however, only by degrees, and in proportion as the 
character of His mission was gradually unfolded. 

Baptized in the Jordan unto the baptism of John, 
and sealed by the Witness and the Spirit from the 
Father, He began the prophetic ministry already Prophetic, 
spoken of in this chapter, and made both the Twelve 
and the Seventy partakers of the same. As He 
preached the coming kingdom and wrought " signs," 
He sent them before His face with a like message, 
and like powers. By a wonderful course of minute 

16 S. Matt., xvi. 18 ; 1 Pet., ii. 4, 5 ; Ephes., ii. 20; Rev., xxi. 14. 



6 HISTOEY OF THE CHURCH. JBK. I. 

teaching, of which the substance only is recorded 
in the Gospels, 16 He trained them the meanwhile 
for positions of higher trust afterwards to be given. 
So in the second stage of His ministerial work: 
when, on the night in which He was betrayed, He 

Priestly, entered upon the exercise of His priestly office, 
offering Himself a willing offering for the sin of the 
whole world, He instituted a solemn memorial of 
His death and sacrifice, and commissioned the 
Apostles 17 to continue the same mystic rite in re- 
membrance of Him. So, finally: when He began 
to enter upon His reign, having risen from the dead, 

Kingiy. a /cing, victorious over hell, and endued with all 
* power in heaven and in earth, He gave them the 
full commission so often before promised ; 18 sending 
them forth as the Father had sent Him, to make 
disciples of all nations, to evangelize and baptize, 
to minister in things sacred, to bind and loose, to 
teach, to rule, and in short to be His Apostles or 
Ambassadors to the end of time. 

To this He added final and particular instructions ; 
frequently appearing to the disciples during the 

36 S. John, xxi. 25. large. In the following work, 
17 In the Christian Church, as however, I use the terms " kingly, 
in the Jewish — (1 Pet., ii. 5, and priestly, and prophetic," in their 
Exod., xix. 6) — the kingly and larger sense, chiefly: as indicat- 
priestly character belongs to all ing respectively the ministry of 
believers, all being partakers of government — of rites, sacraments, 
Clmst the Head. But, as it be- etc. — and of that out-going activ- 
longs to Christ in one sense, and ily in works of mercy, with preach- 
to His people in another, so it ing, teaching, etc., which is pre- 
belongs to the ministry in a third paratory to the more exact train- 
sense. It belongs to Christ ah- ing in the Church. 
sohdely, as Head; to the minis- Je S. Matt., xvi. 17-19; xix. 28: 
try ministerially, as representing S. Mark, i. 17. In such passages 
Christ to His people ; and to His there is a promise ; in S. Matt., 
people derivatively, as His body, xxviii. 18, etc., etc., there is the 
representing Him to the world at actual gift of authority. 



CH. I.] THE ORGANIZATION". 7 

space of forty days, performing miracles profoundly The Great 
significant 19 of the spiritual character of His reign, Days! 
and speaking to them of things pertaining to the 
kingdom. 

Having thus provided for the earthly future of 
His kingdom, like a prince, who, about to journey 
into a far country, commits the management of his 
estate to chosen ministers or stewards, 20 He gave His 
parting benediction to the Disciples; went away 
from them : ascended triumphantly into heaven, Th e as- 

• TT- "I 1 • 1 CenS10n - 

and sat down m His proper place at the right hand 
of God. 

From the day of the Ascension, the Disciples The 

Disciples 

waited in Jerusalem for " the promise of the waiting. 
Father :" that " power" of the Holy Ghost, which 
should enable them to do the work committed to 
them, first in Jerusalem and Judaea, then in Sa- 
maria, and finally among all nations to the utmost 
borders of the earth. 

They were now an Ecclesia* 1 a spiritual com- The porm- 
monwealth or society, duly called, trained, instruct- Quicken- 
ed, and commissioned for God's work ; but it re- mg * 
mained for the Spirit to give life and energy to 
their ministry. They were a house rightly ordered, 
with the candles set upon candlesticks, and each 
thing in its place; but it needed a divine light to 
light the candles, that the order of the house might 
be made apparent. They were, in short, an organ- 
ized body, fitly joined and compacted; but, as in 

19 S. Luke, xxiy. 31; S. John, in early times. The term "king- 
xx. 19; xxi. 1-11. dom," applies to it only as com- 

20 S. Matt., xxv. 14. plete in Christ the Head. We 

21 Ecclesia — concilium, concili- pray, therefore, " Thy kingdom 
abulum, synodus, collegium, by come." We wait for " His ap- 
which names it was often called pearing and His kingdom." 



8 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. I. 

the original creation God first formed man of the 
dust of the earth, and then breathed into his nostrils 
that breath of life by which man became a living 
soul, so, in the mystical Body of Christ, the framing 
and the quickening were kept distinct from one 
another. The Word had fashioned and created, the 
The mng Spirit was to quicken. The King had organized, 
ciete. the Paraclete was to inspire, and energize, and 
guide : to give practical efficiency to the whole order 
and administration. 

In the mean time, however, the Disciples did not 
await in idleness the advent of the promised Para- 
clete. They continued with one accord in prayer 
and supplication; and as a breach had been made 
in their body by the apostasy of Judas, they 
elected one of their number to fill the vacant place. 
Matthias Matthias was duly chosen by the action of the Dis- 
ciples, and by the will of God. He took the Bish- 
opric of Judas, and was numbered among the 
twelve Apostles. 



CHAPTEK n. 

THE PENTECOSTAL GIFT. 

When the promised Day arrived, it found the 

Disciples, thus, in the fulness of their number as 

originally called. There were about one hundred 

Number and twenty names enrolled, among whom were the 

Disciples. Twelve, and probably the Seventy, all belonging to 

that devout class of Jews who are described as 



CH. II.] THE PENTECOSTAL GIFT. 9 

waiting for the Kingdom. Besides these there were 
possibly as many as five hnndred, 1 male and female, 
who were included nnder the general name of 
Brethren. !Nbt this larger number, however, bnt 
probably only the smaller one first mentioned, were 
assembled " in one place" on the Day of Pentecost. 
At the same time, in compliance with the Law, 
and by virtue of a long course of providential Pre- 
paration, 2 there was a much larger concourse of 
devout and faithful Jews, who had come up from The as- 
every quarter to the annual Feast of the First Fruits. onLvS 

. . Jews 

For the Israelites, at this time, were at home every- 
where. In the expressive language of the Prophet, 
they were " sown" among the nations ; they were 
" the dew upon the grass" of heathen society, pre- Prepara- 
paring the field for the sickle of the Gospel reapers. 
They were bearing an ecumenical witness to the 
unity of the Godhead. It was as representatives, 
then, of a vast system of preparation, that these 
devout Jews, the flower of the Dispersion, had once 
more assembled to wait upon the Lord, and to give 
utterance to that unceasing prayer of the Jewish 
heart, " Lord wilt Thou, at this time, restore again 
the Kingdom to Israel !" 

The congregation of the Disciples was thus in the 

1 1 Cor., xv. 6. Redeemed, and Neander's Intro- 

2 The Preparation for Christian- duction. This last, however, is a 
ity is the history of Civilization history of the preparation for the 
in the ancient world. As the Gospel merely ; whereas, the pro- 
Law was a Pcedagogus leading 1 gress of civilization among the 
men to Christ, so, also, says S. ancients, both Jews and Greets, 
Clement of Alexandria, was the prepared the way equally for the 
philosophy or culture of the Gospel and the Church. Mos- 
Greeks. The same good Provi- heini's first chapter dwells too 
dence was manifest in both. On much on the negative preparation; 
this subject see Bossuet's Histoire i. e., upon the failure of every 
Universelle, Jarvis's Church of the thing that preceded Christianity. 

1* 



given. 



10 HISTOEY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. I. 

midst of the Assembly of devout Hebrews, the Dis- 
persion, the Nations, as the "little leaven hid in 
three measures of meal." It required but a breath 
from on high to enable that leaven to leaven the 
whole lump. 
Descent How that Breath came, in a way as beautifully 
spirit. significant as it was miraculous, filling the whole 
house wherein the Disciples were assembled, and 
what was the immediate result, is familiar to every 
reader of the Acts of the Apostles. 

It is sufficient to note here, that though three 
thousand souls were forthwith converted to the 
Gospel, and though every clay afterwards added to 
the number, the Apostles were at no loss in estab'- 
Gvto lishing order among the multitudes who thus eagerly 
pressed in. The divine instructions in " the things 
pertaining to the Kingdom," recently received, had 
doubtless prepared them for so great an emergency. 
Accordingly, those who believed were baptized. 
Upon those baptized, the Apostles laid their hands, 
imparting to them "gifts," which, in the lack of a 
sufficient number of duly trained Ministers, seem to 
have fitted the whole body for some share in the 
great work, and to have made the ministry, for a 
while, almost co-extensive with the Church itself. 3 
At all events, the converts freely offered themselves, 
and all they had, to the disposal of the Apostles, 
judaic In this way the foundation of the Church was 

tion? a " laid in that race, or rather in that blessed and 
covenanted " remnant," to which it had been 

3 The "gifts" were given "for istry," tfcc. Ephes., iv. 7-12. The 

the perfecting (i. e., fitting) of the word " ministry" I understand in 

saints (i. e., believers), for (or lit- its larger sense, as including all 

erally into or unto) work of min- kinds of service to the Church. 






CH. II.] 



THE PENTECOSTAL GIFT. 



11 



originally promised. The chosen people continued 
the chosen people still. Jews were the first pro-, 
claimers of the Gospel ; Jews its first converts ; the 
first demonstration of its order, as of its power, was 
in a community exclusively Judaic. 

And the application of this principle was not con- £» aii 
fined to Jerusalem, or Palestine only. These Pente- of the 

. a i World. 

costal converts, sojourners as many of them were m 
far distant lands, could hardly have failed, after a 
while, to return to the places of their dispersion, and 
to spread the glad tidings of what they had seen and 
heard. 4 As S. Paul testified not many years after, 6 
the sound of the Gospel went out into all lands, its 
words to the ends of the world. Through Judaism, 
as through a vast nervous tissue, the notes of the 
Pentecostal trumpet were indefinitely prolonged. 
Everywhere Israelites believed, or had opportunity 
to believe. Of the wide-spreading tree of Judaism, 
therefore, it might truly be said, that the stock 
which contained the faith, not merely the blood, of 
Abraham, was renovated and saved by reception of 
the Gospel: the unbelieving branches were 'alone 
cut off. 6 



4 Among the first preachers 
mentioned in the Acts, were 
"Mcolas, a proselyte of Anti- 
och," " Ananias," a. " disciple" in 
Damascus, " men of Cyprus and 
Cyrene," and Lucius, of Gyrene ; 
to whom may be added Saul of 
Tarsus, and Ap olios of Alex- 



andria. Acts, vi. 5 ; ix. 10 ; xi. 
20 ; xiii. 1, etc. 

5 Eom., x. 18. 

6 The subject of the Judaic 
foundation is ably brought out in 
Thiersch's History of the Christian 
Church, translated by Thomas 
Carlyle, Esq. 



12 



HISTOEY OF THE CHURCH. 



[BK. 1. 



CHAPTEE in. 



THE TWELVE IN JERUSALEM. 



Twelve 
Years. 



Impor- 
tance of 
Jerusa- 



lem. 



Out of 
Zion the 
Law. 



The Apostles remained in Jerusalem, for a period, 
it is supposed, of about twelve years ; making fre- 
quent excursions, however, into the towns of Judaea, 
Samaria, Galilee, and even, it may have been, into 
more distant regions. 

So long a residence in one place was warranted 
by the importance of Jerusalem, as the sacred city 
of the Hebrews, as a point of universal concourse, 
and as the living heart of orthodox religion. 1 From 
such a centre it was easy to keep an eye upon all 
other quarters. It was the place, especially, to 
which those devout men resorted annually, who 
were in fit preparation for the Kingdom, and who 
could be most readily converted, not into believers 
merely, but into Evangelists and Teachers for all 
parts of the world. It was the most proper position, 
in short, for the first manifestation of the Gospel, 
both in its power and in its order. As the prose- 
lytes, gathered everywhere from among the Jews 
of the Dispersion, would naturally look to Zion as 
the fountain-head of the true Law, 2 nothing could 
be more essential than that the system established 
there should be in every way perfect and complete. 
The Apostles, therefore, were not unmindful of the 



1 See Professor Blrmt's Lee- of the First Three Centuries, 
tures on the Church History 2 Mic, iv. 2. 



Cn. III.] THE TWELVE IN JERUSALEM. 13 

command to " go forth." and " disciple" all the na- 
tions. They made Jerusalem, their starting-point. 
They concentrated there for a while that outgoing 
energy, by which the world was to be converted. 
For the further stages of their mission, they waited 
till the door should be fairly opened, or till the Lord 
Himself should give them the expected sign. 

The Church in Jerusalem, therefore, was the ob- 
ject of interest for a while to the whole company 
of the Apostles. Under their care, the little band 
of Pentecost grew into a- large and thoroughly 
disciplined host. Trained already to the form of ThePen- 

r v tecostal 

godliness by the admirable discipline of the Syna- society, 
gogue and Temple, the Hebrew converts were 
moulded with little effort into an orderly, regular, 
self-sacrificing life. The doctrine of the Apostles 
was their rule of faith ; the communion of the 
Apostles their bond of fellowship. To avoid need- 
less separation from their countrymen, they resorted 
for "prayers" to the Temple. To abstain from 
needless offence, they celebrated the " breaking of 
bread," and the " love-feast," in houses more retired. 
Giving themselves and their all to the common 
cause, with a profound conviction that the work 
before them was one which demanded their utmost 
efforts, they spontaneously fell into a sort of camp- Not com- 
life : a continuation, as it were, of that annual ex- m 
hibition of mutual support, and fraternal equality, 
which the Jews were accustomed to afford at their 
solemn feasts. For it was not the least of the ad- 
vantages of those great gatherings, that they pro- 
moted, for the time being at least, a hospitality 
which made " all things common." They were 
seasons at which the rich differed from the poor 



14 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. I. 

chiefly in the power of giving and entertaining. 
The earliest Jewish Christian Church was a pro- 
longation, as it were, of one of these happy times. 
It was a Pentecostal week extending itself into a 
Pentecostal life. It required, of course, no little 
sacrifice of domestic comfort. But the sacrifice was 
a spontaneous and free-will offering. It was accom- 
panied, therefore, with a gladness and singleness of 
heart, which distinguished it from mere commun- 
istic or monastic schemes, and commended it to the 
favor of all classes of the people. 

So heavenly a state of things could not con- 
tinue long undisturbed in any community of men. 
sin of Ananias and Sapphira, attempting to serve two 

Ananias - 1 - 1 - sr o 

a° d v . masters, introduced into the infant society the old 

Sapphira. 7 * y 

Jewish leaven of secret mammon-worship. It was 
the sin of Achan : avarice availing itself of things 
devoted to the Lord. It was an offence that lay at 
the door of the Church's progress ; and was punished 
by the same righteous vengeance, which on two 
occasions before had armed our Lord with the 
knotted scourge, and which we find breaking out 
twice afterwards, on the thresholds respectively of 
Samaritan and Gentile Christianity. 
Dissen- Differences, also, which had been forgotten in the 

first glow of charity, began to be felt again, and the 
peace of the Church was marred by frivolous dis- 
sensions. 

The Hellenist converts murmured against the 
Hebrews, because, as they complained, their widows 
were neglected in the daily ministrations of the 
bounties of the Church. In such cases Charity is 
obliged to call in system to her aid. To do justice 
to any ministration there must be special ministers 



sions 



CH. HI.] THE TWELVE IN JEEUSALEM. 15 

appointed for the purpose. The Apostles, therefore, 
called an Assembly of the body of the Disciples ; 
stated the incompatibility of cares of this kind with 
their own more spiritual duties : and caused seven £ he seven 

I " Deacons, 

men to be chosen, probably from among the Hel- A - D - 34 - 
lenist party, whom they set apart by the laying on 
of hands to attend to such matters in future. The 
seven, thus chosen and ordained, are the first, per- 
haps, 3 who received the distinctive title of Deacons. 
A similar necessity for orderly distribution of 
ministerial cares led the Apostles, about this time, 
according to Eusebius, or it may have been a little 
later, to place James, surnamed the Just, one of the Jam «» 

' x } , made 

Lord's brethren, in special oversight of the Church Bishop, 
in Jerusalem. Though the Apostles remained in 
the city, or thereabouts, yet their attention soon 
began to be diverted to other quarters. Nothing 
was more natural, then, than that a responsibility, 
which devolving upon all alike might be in danger 
of being neglected, should be laid especially upon 
one as his proper and peculiar charge. 

It is still a question, whether this James is the J ames an 

- 1 - Apostle. 

same as the son of Alphseus, one of the original 
Twelve, or is to be numbered rather with Apostles 
of a somewhat later calling. If one of the Twelve, 
his oversight of the Church in Jerusalem is the first 
instance of one of their number confined to a local 
jurisdiction. "Whether one of them or not, he was 
at all events a colleague of the Apostles, on terms of 
perfect equality with them ; and was treated on all 
occasions of apostolic conference, as one of the 

3 This, and other matters con- Mosheim's Commentaries, and 
nected with the Pentecostal Bishop Hinds's History of the 
Church, are amply discussed in First Century. 



16 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. I. 

"pillars," or as the word in its connections seems 
to imply, one of the original pillars, of the Church. 4 
This settlement of the government in Jerusalem, 
under one responsible head, may have been hastened 
by a series of events, which followed close upon 
the appointment of the Seven. The increased zeal 
in preaching, and the growing popularity of the 
Persecu- Gospel, awakened the spirit of persecution among 
a.d!34. the Sadducee rulers. Peter and John were seized 
twice, and narrowly escaped with their lives. A 
more furious storm was excited against Stephen, one 
of the seven deacons. By the election of these 
officers, the Apostles had been enabled to give them- 
selves more fully to the ministry of the Word. 
Others, who had the gift of utterance, followed 
their example. Multitudes were converted, and 
second anions them a great company of priests. 6 It seemed 

Pentecost. & ° | . r 

a second Pentecost. Old things were rapidly pass- 
ing away, all things were in process of renewal. 
Conscious of the progress of this mighty change, 
and endowed to an extraordinary degree with pro- 
phetic and evangelic gifts, Stephen had borne a 
clear witness to the fulfilment of the Mosaic Law 
in Christ, and had drawn upon himself the special 

4 Acts, xv. 13-22; Gal., ii. 9. with James the son of Al- 

In this last passage James, Ce- phams. 

phas, and John give to Paul and 5 The first allusion to Presby- 

Barnabas " the right hand of fel- ters or Elders in the Jerusalem 

lowship," and are spoken of as Church, is in Acts, xi. 30. As 

Apostles before these latter: i. e., there is every probability that 

of an earlier calling. This seems those who had been bred in the 

to make James one of the original Judaic ministry became, on their 

Twelve. The passages alleged conversion, ministers in the 

against this view are easily in- Church, we may suppose that 

terpreted in accordance with it. Presbyters existed from the time 

My own opinion is in favor of the of this conversion of " the great 

identity of James of Jerusalem company of Priests," if not earlier. 



CH. m.] THE TWELVE IN JERUSALEM. 17 

indignation of the more zealous pilgrims and 
sojourners. Being brought before the council, he 
bore the same testimony still. He was cast out of Death of 
the city and stoned to death ; but the mantle of his ep e 
martyr spirit descended invisibly upon a young Ben- 
jamite standing by, with more than a double portion 
of his power and boldness. 

The death of Stephen was followed by a general 
persecution. Saul, who knew not as yet his own Dispersion 
higher calling, was particularly active in scattering Disciples. 
the flock. The dispersion that ensued, however, 
only disseminated the more widely the seeds of 
divine truth, and opened a way for the Gospel 
amono; distant nations. 

Philip, an Evangelist by gift, and one of the JeS'n* 110 
seven Deacons by ordination, repaired to Samaria, 
preached, performed miracles, and baptized a great 
number of the jDeople. Peter and John, hearing 
of this success, came down from Jerusalem, and set 
their Apostolic seal to the work of Philip. They 
laid their hands on the converts, and gave them 
miraculous gifts. Simon Magus, one of the number, simon 

o ' j Magus. 

coveted this Apostolic power, and offered money for 
it. Kejected by S. Peter, he became subsequently 
an apostate, and is known in history as the leader 
of the Gnostic heresy. He is still better known 
for that practical heresy, called simony^ which has 
ever since remained "a gall of bitterness, and a 
bond of iniquity," in so many portions of the 
Church. From Samaria, Philip repaired to the 
desert region towards Gaza, where he baptized the The eu- 
Eunuch of Queen Candace, and so sent a seed of Ethiopia, 
light to the distant land of Ethiopia. 

Other disciples, scattered abroad at the same time, 



Other 



18 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. I. 

were equally successful. Some went to Damascus ; 
where they were hardly more than settled, when 
they learned to their dismay that their most eager 
Disciples, persecutor, "the Benjamite wolf," was on his way 
to the city, with authority from the high-priest to 
carry them bound to Jerusalem. They soon learned 
to their astonishment, however, that the wolf had 
been converted into a chosen shepherd of the nock. 
Another party repaired to Cyprus, the home of 
the Levite Barnabas, soon to be reckoned among 
Apostles. Others fled to Phcenice; and at length, 
after the lapse of several years, the door to the 
Gentiles having been in the mean time opened by 
that Apostle to whom the keys of the kingdom had 
been promised, another party preached with great 
success to the Hellenic population of Antioch, the 
head of the province of Syria, and in fact the great 
metropolis of the East. 
Persecu- But the storm, which was thus widely scattering 
a. d. 36-4i. the seeds of truth, had long since spent its fury in 
Jerusalem itself. Towards the end of the reign of 
Tiberius, Pontius Pilate was deposed from the 
government of Judsea; Caiaphas was ejected from 
the high-priesthood ; and in the succeeding reigns 
of the Emperors Caligula and Claudius, Judsea and 
Samaria were annexed to the presidency of Syria, 
and all Palestine came under the rule of Herod 
Agrippa. These events proved favorable, for a 
while, to the tranquillity of the Christians. The 
Jews, absorbed in troubles of their own, had little 
s. Peter time for persecution. A great calm ensued. S. Peter 
churchS. availed himself of the opportunity to exercise both 

6 Jarvis, Church of the Redeemed, period v., ch. vii. 



CH. in.] THE TWELVE IN JERUSALEM. 19 

his episcopal and his evangelic calling; visiting 
the churches in Judaea, Galilee, and Samaria, and 
confirming the disciples in the unity of the Faith. 
It was in the course of these visitations, that Cor- 
nelius, the devout Roman soldier, was admitted with 
his household to Baptism ; and so a foundation was 
laid for a Gentile Christian Church in the important 
city of Csesarea. 7 

Of other Apostles, at this period, there is no ex- ^ h ® s ^ r 
press record. It is to be presumed, however, that 
most of them were engaged in the same way as 
S. Peter. "Within the circle of Judsea, and Samaria, 
and Galilee, there was room enough for them all; 
and while they still met at Jerusalem, as the com- 
mon centre, they probably saw less of that city every 
year. Before they departed for more distant fields, 
one of the four Gospels, that of S. Matthew, had 
been written. Having had experience of the wants 
of growing Churches, they can hardly be supposed 
to have parted company without some mutual under- 
standing as to creeds, forms of worship, rules of 
discipline, and the like ; though in all such matters 
the mere fact that they had been trained in the 
same school, and for A so long a period associated in 
the same field of labor, would be enough, independ- 
ently of the gift of inspiration, to secure a reasonable 
degree of uniformity in their preaching, and in their 
practice. 

And it is for this reason, probably, -that in the inspired 
inspired narrative of the Acts of the Apostles we limiS 
have only one line of Apostolic labor followed out 
with any approach to minuteness. Sacred History 

T It is to be noted here, that the Jewish, Samaritan, and Gen- 
Jerusalem, Samaria, Csesarea, tile populations of Palestine, 
were the heads respectively of 



20 HISTORY OF THE CHUECH. [bk. I. 

is averse to idle repetitions. Knowing what one 
Apostle did under any given circumstances, we have 
a right to take for granted, that all under like cir- 
cumstances followed mnch the same course. 

From the time of the conversion of the Greeks at 
Antioch there had been a lively and friendly inter- 
course between the Christians of that city, and those 
Mission f the mother Church. Barnabas had been sent 

to the Gen- 

40-45 A " D ' thither, apparently with Apostolic powers ; and had 
taken with him Saul, whom he found in Tarsus. 
Quite a company of Prophets had followed. In 
return, the Antiochean Christians, having heard of 
the distress of their brethren in Judaea by reason 
of a great dearth which prevailed about the year 
forty-three, made a collection for their relief, and 
sent it to them by the hand of Barnabas and Saul. 
About the same time, Herod Agrippa, the king of 
Palestine, took offence at certain of the Church 
leaders ; put James the Elder, the brother of John, 
to death ; and finding this course to be popular with 
the Jews, cast Peter into prison. There were thus 
two causes at work, to impel the Apostles forth to 
their wider field of labor. There was persecution 
at home, and an open door abroad. Such circum- 
stances would naturally be regarded as an indication 
of God's will. Accordingly, Peter, when miracu- 
lously released from his imprisonment, went down 
to Caesarea, the scene of the earliest success among 
the Gentiles, and there for a while abode. Not 
very long after, Barnabas and Saul were sent forth 
from Antioch on their first missionary journey. 
There is good reason to believe, that a similar course 
was at the same time pursued by most, if not all 
of the Apostles. 



CH. IV.] CHUECHES OF THE GENTILES. 21 



CHAPTER IT. 

CHURCHES OF THE GENTILES S. PAUL. 

It has already been seen, that the persecution T g 1 e fl ( J^ s s " 
which arose about Stephen caused the Gospel to ° u £ 
flow out in all directions, and the wave continuing 
to roll on long after the storm had ceased, extended 
at length as far as the great metropolis of Syria, and 
resulted in the establishment there of a flourishing 
congregation of Gentile Christians. In the same 
way, it has been noticed incidentally that, some 
years prior to this event, the door had been opened to 
the Gentiles, in a more formal way, by the ministry 
of S. Peter, in the case of the Roman Centurion 
Cornelius. 

With this first example of Gentile faith, the ques- Gentiles 
tion of immediate admission to the Church by Bap- to Grace, 
tism, or of a previous probation by obedience to the 
Law, naturally came up for determination. To S. 
Peter's mind it was made clear by a special revela- 
tion. It was symbolically shown him that God had 
cleansed what had hitherto been judged unclean. 
Humanity in its varied types was to be regarded 
henceforward as a new creation ; a clean and docile 
flock, let down, as it were, out of Heaven, and con- 
ducted by God's own hand to the door of the Ark. 

This pregnant principle, confirmed by the out- p rJnciple 
pouring of miraculous gifts upon Cornelius and his admitted - 
house, was acknowledged by the Church of Jerusa- 



22 



HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. 



[be. I. 



Csesarea 
a mother 
Church. 



Gospel in world. 

other 

places. 



lem, and began to be generally apprehended as a 
settled rule. 

From this time forward also, Csesarea, the home 
of the congregation formed by the household of 
Cornelius, became a centre and Mother Church of * 
Gentile Christianity. 

The preparation of heart and mind, so remarkably 
shown in this instance, was doubtless going on sim- 
ultaneously in many other parts of the civilized 
In Pome itself there were Christians at a 
very early date; and it is said that Simon Peter 
went thither just after the baptism of Cornelius. 1 
It is more probable, that the tradition is derived 
from a later visit of. the Apostle, or from attributing 
to Peter the acts of some other of the many Simons 
who were then engaged in evangelic labors. In 
parts of Egypt also, the Gospel seems to have been 
proclaimed long before the arrival of S. Mark, the 
founder of the Church in that country. The sect of 
Therapeutse, 2 described by Philo the Jew, has the 
appearance of having been a sort of Jewish Christian 



1 It is more certain, as Dr. Jar- 
vis shows, that the Jews who 
had been banished from Rome 
under Tiberius, and who were in 
Jerusalem on the Day of Pente- 
cost, were, about this time, al- 
lowed to return to the imperial 
city. They, doubtless, carried the 
Gospel with them. See Church 
of the Redeemed, Per. V., vii. 1. 

2 The fact, that these " citizens 
of Heaven upon earth," as they 
called themselves, had some pe- 
culiarities not wholly Christian, 
weighs nothing against the the- 
ory of Eusebius on the subject ; 
for nothing could be more natural, 



than that imperfect imitations of 
the Pentecostal community in Je- 
rusalem, should spring up among 
Jews in other regions. Apollos, 
the learned Alexandrian, preach- 
ed the Gospel, not only before 
he was baptized, but before he 
was more than partially instruct- 
ed. Acts, xviii. 24-28 ; Euseb. 
Eccles. Hist. ii. 17; Philo Ju- 
dffius, ii., 470, Ed. Mango, (vol. 
4, p. 6, Bonn's Ed.) With this 
compare the account of Christian 
manners in the Epistola ad Diog- 
itetniii, an extract from which is 
given in Schaff 's History of the 
Church, p. 146. 



CH. IV.] CHURCHES OF THE GENTILES. 23 

Society. Glimpses, in short, of a preparatory Pen- 
tecostal preaching of the Gospel, followed in dne 
time by the more decisive labors of Apostolic 
founders, are discernible in the traditions, or in the 
customs, of many of the early Churches. 

But the time had come at length for that full More 

° , decided 

manifestation of the grace of God to the Gentiles, manifesta- 

. . . tion - 

which, as destined to take root in the richest soil of 

our humanity, and to bear the most varied and 

abiding fruits, has been chosen by inspiration as the 

special historic theme of the first century. 

Saul of Tarsus, 3 the flower of the Jewish schools, a 
Roman by civil rights, a Greek in versatility and 
force of mind, had been converted, baptized, and set 
apart to the Apostolic office, soon after the martyr- 
dom of S. Stephen ; but owing to the unripeness of 
the times for his peculiar work, had been obliged to 
school his fiery zeal for several years in compara- 
tively obscure and unimportant fields of labor. 
From this retirement Barnabas was inspired to call 
him forth. Being himself a man of Prophetic and 
Apostolic gifts, and being sent by the Mother Church 
in Jerusalem to build up the Greek congregation in 
the great Metropolis of Syria, he discerned in Saul 
a suitable partner of his labors, and invited him ac- 
cordingly into that noble field. 

In Antioch the two labored together for three in Antioch 

believers 

years or more. Multitudes of Greeks were con- called 

ia i i • n ti -i • • ' Christians, 

verted. A new centre and mother city of Kehgion a. d. 45. 
was established. And, as if to mark an epoch in 
Church History, the term ISTazarenes, which the Jews 



3 Conybeare and Howson : Life and Epistles of S. Paul. Paley ; 
Horce Paulince. 



24 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. I. 

had applied to the followers of Jesus, began to be 
replaced by the more honorable title of Christians. 
The two Abont the year forty-five, "just after a season of 

Apostles # ^ " ' ■ *> 

se D tf 45 tb ' ex ^aordinary fasting and prayer, Antiochean pro- 
phets were inspired by the Holy Ghost to " separate 
Barnabas and Saul" for a mission still more fruitful 
and extensive. 

Cyprus. Being thus sent forth by the Spirit, 4 the Apostles 
repaired to Seleucia, thence to the Island of Cyprus ; 
which having traversed from end to end, preaching 
in all the synagogues of the Jews, they at last stood 
in the presence of the Deputy, or Proconsul, Sergius 
Paulus. 

Eiymas. Here occurred the third of those great " signs" of 
judgment, which marked the initiative, as it were, 
of the three main stages of the Church's progress. 
The Gospel had been met by two forms of hypocrisy 
in the persons of Ananias the Jew and Simon Magus 
the Samaritan. Now, in the person of Eiymas, or 
Bar-Jesus, it is encountered by the Spirit of negation 
and downright contradiction. The crisis was one 
of vast importance. Over the strong and skeptical 
but superstitious intellect of the Roman world, Sor- 
cery now wielded the sceptre which had long since 
fallen from the palsied hand of Religion. To gain 
a hearing for the Gospel, this baleful power must 
be confronted and disarmed. The contest was easily 
decided. Eiymas, fit type of godless intellect, was 
blinded for a season ; and, reduced to a childlike 

4 Saul's ordination was by the dinary seal, through Prophets 

mouth of the Lord himself: Acts, specially inspired for the occa- 

xxii. 14, 15, 17-21; 2 Cor. xii. sion, to the ordination previously 

The laying on of hands, in Acts, given ; or, as is more likely, a 

xiii. 1-4, was, therefore, not an mere setting apart to missionary 

ordination, but either an extraor- labor. 



CH. IV.] CHURCHES OF THE GENTILES. 25 

condition, had to look around for some one to guide 
him. Sergius Paulus believed. And Saul, hence- 
forward called Paul in memory, it is supposed, of 
this great victory, departed shortly after from Pa- 
phos, and proceeded with his company to Perga in 
Pamphylia. 

Thence, the course of the Apostles may be briefly f h ° e " se gf 
described, as, first, a journey forward to preach the tles - 
Gospel, and baptize ; and then a return on the same 
line, with a careful visitation of all the evangelized 
towns and cities, to confirm the disciples, to ordain 
Presbyters ; in short, to organize local Churches — a 
work uniformly accompanied by prayer and fasting. 
To account for the rapidity with which the establish- 
ment of local ministries was accomplished, we must 
suppose not only great zeal and self-devotion on the 
part of the new converts, but a large outpouring of 
supernatural gifts. In many cases, fit men were 
pointed out by the spirit of prophecy. Timothy, 
a young convert, thus designated by prophecies 
going before, 5 was selected for a higher and larger 
ministry in the Church ; and after S. Paul's next 
visit to that region, accompanied him constantly as a 
chosen disciple and companion. 

Having returned to the Hellenist mother city, the Return to 
Apostles cheered all hearts with the tidings that a. 1 ©! ^.' 
the door of faith had been effectually opened to the 
Gentile world. This door, however, was near being 
closed again by the perverse dogmatism of certain 
Judaizing Christians. 
% It was the same question that had already been 
settled in the case of Cornelius ; coming up, how- 

5 1 Tim. i. 18. 



26 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. I. 

ever, in a somewhat modified shape. Judaism had 
S?th the ^eeii remoYe d 5 a8 i* were, from the vestibule of the 
judaizers. Gospel : it was now endeavoring to find itself a 
place in the very sanctuary. If not circumcised 
before admission to God's grace, should not the 
Gentiles at least be circumcised after ? Should not 
obedience to the Law be one of the fruits of the 
grace vouchsafed by the Gospel? The question was 
not one of ceremonial merely. It involved the com- 
pleteness of the Church in Christ the Head. It 
involved by implication the divinity and absolute 
sovereignty of Christ the Head. To put the Law 
on a level with Grace, would be, in effect, to put 
Moses the servant on a level with Christ the Son. 8 
The strong bias that existed in the Jewish mind 
towards this form of heresy, made it the more 
necessary that the real position of the Church 
should be clearly and conclusively defined, 
settled in The question was finally settled in a council of 
jemsa- the Apostles, with the Elders and Brethren of the 
500V 52. ' Mother Church in Jerusalem. One point of natural 
law, almost forgotten by the heathen, and three 
ancient precej)ts 7 of the ]SToachic covenant, were re- 
enacted. Beyond this, no legal burden was allowed 
to be imposed upon Gentile Christians. It. doubtless 
added weight to this decree, that it had been drawn 
up by James, whose name had been unwarrantably 
used by the Judaizers, and who held a high place 
in the Church as the Bishop, or Apostle, of the Cir- 
cumcision. 

6 Heb. iii. 5, 6 ; Col. ii. 10. rigidly enforced, is certain, from 

T Acts, xv. 29. Whether these Rom/xiv. 14; 1 Cor. x. 25, etc. 

three precepts were intended to On this point see Hinds's Hist, of 

be permanently binding may be Chr. Ch., part ii., ch. iv. 
doubted : that they were not 



CH. IV.] CHUKCHES OF THE GENTILES. 27 



The 

Church 

free. 



By this important act, the Church was absolved 
from the bands of the Law, and Christianity was 
declared complete in itself. Salvation was a gift 
intended for all men. It was to be given freely 
to all who had faith to receive it. The Law could 
add nothing to it: the absence of the Law conld 
detract nothing from it. The Tree of Life had taken 
root below the crnst of Judaism; and whatever 
leaves it might afterwards put forth in the shape 
of needful forms, or canons, would draw their 
nourishment, not from any national or sectional 
source, but as it were from the Catholic soil of 
redeemed and sanctified humanity. 

This point settled, the Apostle of the Gentiles s - Paul ' s 

-•• 7 ... general 

could proceed unembarrassed in his mighty labors, course. 
The course pursued in his first journey he continued, 
so far as we can learn, to the end of his life. To 
visit the Churches already founded; to write, or 
send messengers, to them ; to add new fields of labor 
by missionary journeys into parts unappropriated 
as yet by other Apostles ; to repair occasionally to 
Jerusalem, or Antioch, on errands of charity, friend- 
ship, or devotion; and, finally, to concentrate his 
efforts by residences of two or three years in the 
great world-centres, the ganglions, as it were, of the 
social system ; these, with sufferings, toils, successes, 
unparalleled in the history of human labor, are the 
sum of that wonderful life, so simply and yet so 
graphically portrayed in the living narrative of the 
Acts. 

In the Apostle's second journey, the design of g; c p a n u J' s 
which was to "visit the brethren in every city{?™y: 
where he had preached the word of God," having A - D - 5 °-^ 
separated from Barnabas on account of a dissension 



28 



HISTOEY OF THE CHUECH. 



[BK. I. 



Timothy. 



Corinth. 



with regard to Mark, lie took Silas with him, and 
went through Syria and Cilicia, confirming the 
Churches. At Lystra he added Timothy to his 
company. Thence passing through Phrygia and 
Galatia, he naturally looked towards Ephesus, the 
great and enlightened centre of Asia Proper. But, 
diverted from that field by a special admonition of 
the Holy Ghost, he crossed over to Macedonia ; 
preached the Gospel in Philippi, Thessalonica, and 
other chief cities ; left Timothy and Silas to go on 
with the work ; spent a short time in Athens ; and 
finally took np his abode in Corinth, and made of it 
another great centre of Christian influence. There 
S. Paul remained, pouring out his whole heart to 
the most eager, susceptible, and inquisitive of all 
people, for more than eighteen months. From that 
conspicuous and cosmopolitan position, he kept an 
eye upon the Churches which he and his companions 
had established in Macedonia, Achaia, and the parts 
adjacent. Here, also, he began another fruitful 
branch of his labors, by writing two Epistles to the 
brethren in Thessalonica. 

After a visit of devotion to Jerusalem and Antioch, 
lie began his third journey by revisiting the Churches 
of Galatia and Phrygia in order, and confirming the 
a P d.54S8. Disciples. Then proceeding to Ephesus, another of 
those places where all tides met, he spread his nets 
there for three years or more, drawing within the 
circle of his influence all the chief towns of Asia 
Proper. This city was a great resort of the profes- 
sors of diabolical arts. In combating these forms 
of " spiritual wickedness in high places," the Apos- 
tle seems to have drawn more largely upon super- 
natural resources, than in any other field of his labors. 



CH. IT.] CHURCHES OF THE GENTILES. 29 

Driven at length from Ephesus, he made an extensive 
visitation of the Churches in Macedonia and Achaia. 
But a mysterious impulse from the Spirit turned his Toward 
face once more towards Jerusalem, with an expecta- iem. 
tion of finding a way opened thence to Spain, through 
Italy and Eome ; to the Christians of which latter 
city he wrote the most elaborate of his Epistles. 8 
On his way he touched at many places ; among 
others at Miletus, where he met the Ephesian pas- 
tors, and gave them a solemn charge. At every 
place where he touched, he received new warnings 
of the bonds and afflictions that awaited him in 
Jerusalem. 

Having arrived at the Jewish capital, he was re- 
ceived with great kindness by James, and found the 
Church there in a highly flourishing condition. But 
a sedition was stirred up against him among the fan- 
atical Jews. Rescued from their violence by the Ro- 
man officers, he spent two years a prisoner in Csesarea ; csesarea, 
whence, having appealed to Caesar, he was finally sent 
to Rome, " an ambassador in bonds." In this greatest 
of world-centres, which had been for a long time Rome, 
the goal of his earnest aspirations, he taught with 
much freedom for two years or more, seeing the 
little flock grow into " a great multitude," as the 
heathen historian 9 implies, and maintaining a con- 
stant communication, by letter 10 and by Apostolic 
messengers, with the Churches of the vast field in 
which he and his companions had labored. For it 
is to be observed, that S. Paul's "company" had 

8 During- this period were writ- J0 Epistles to the Ephesians, 
ten the Epistles to the Corinth- Philippians, Philemon, Hebrews, 
ians, the Galatians, the 'Romans. Colossians. 

9 Taciti Annal., xv. 44. 



30 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. I. 

received continual accessions ; and where lie could 
not be present in person to superintend the Churches, 
he had reliable men at hand whom he could send in 
his place. 

That the hope so confidently expressed in the 
Epistles to Philemon and the Hebrews, 11 was in due 
time fulfilled ; that the Apostle, set at liberty, re- 
visited once more the field of his mighty labors, 
making permanent provision for the supreme gov- 
ernment of the Churches ; and that, fired with his 
old missionary zeal, he set his face towards the re- 
spain, mote West, visiting Spain 12 as he had long intended, 
Britain and, as tradition says, Gaul and the British Isles : all 

a.d. 63-67. ' -i -, -,. t • t ™ I! 

this has been commonly believed m the Church, and 
harmonizes entirely with the few intimations that can 
be gathered from the pages of Holy "Writ. 

But, in the mean time, the world, governed by a mad 
tyrant, was falling into one of its epidemics of period- 
Nero, ical phrensy. The Jews, at no time remarkable for 
era S i pSe- their patience under the Roman yoke, had been gall- 
A U D !°6 n 4-67. ed into rebellion ; the heathen were in a state of ter- 
rible excitement ; and the hostility to the Gospel, 
which had never more than partially relaxed, and 
which caused Christianity to be everywhere spoken 
against, had been fanned into a fierce and almost 
universal hatred. The Christians were accused of the 
most atrocious crimes. Their religion was regarded 
as a baleful superstition. The tyrant Nero, strongly 



11 Phil. 22 ; Heb. xiii. 19, 23. Apostolic Church, makes an elab- 

It was probably after his release, orate argument against it, but in 

that he wrote the Epistle to Ti- his later work seems to admit it 

tus, and the first to Timothy, as at least explaining certain diffi- 

Neander, Planting of Christianjb- culties in the New Testament. 
ty, iii. 10, argues ably for a sec- 12 Rom. xv. 24, 28. 
ond imprisonment. Dr. Schaff, 



CH. IV.] CHURCHES OF THE- GENTILES. 31 

suspected of having set fire to Roine for his pri- 
vate entertainment, determined to divert suspicion 
from himself, by turning its full force against 
the hated sect. The usual course, in such cases, 
was to extort confessions by the rack. " At first," 
says the heathen historian, 13 " some were seized who cruelties. 
plead guilty ; afterwards, on their testimony, a great 
multitude were convicted, not of incendiarism, but 
of enmity to mankind. To tortures mockery was 
added. The victims were sewed up in the skins of 
beasts, thrown to dogs, hung on crosses, or smeared 
with pitch and set on fire, to light the streets by 
night." Nero revelled in such scenes ; and as he 
opened his gardens for the hideous entertainment, 
looking on with unrestrained delight, or drove 
about the city in the garb of a charioteer, his linea- 
ments stamped themselves upon the Christian mind 
as the very image of Antichrist. The persecution 
became general, and raged till the death of Nero, 
about four years. The Christians of that period, 
however, were too much disturbed and scattered, 
and perhaps too confident in their expectations of 
the approaching end of all things, to chronicle their 
own sufferings. Beyond the brief and hostile ac- 
counts of Tacitus, no unquestioned record of the 
persecution remains. Its horrors are to be inferred 
from the deep tinge they left upon legendary tra- 
dition. 

S. Paul returned to Home while the persecution Martyr- 
was still raging, probably not long before the s. Paui, 
tyrant's death ; and there, in company with S. 
Peter, bore his last witness to the Truth. Being a 
Roman citizen, he was put to death with the sword. 

13 Tacit. Annal., xv. 44. 



32 HISTOEY OF THE CHUECH. [bk. I. 

His second Epistle to Timothy, written in prison 
when he was ready and willing to be offered, and 
alluding to his position, thongh without a word of 
complaint against the monster from whose cruelty 
he suffered, has, in view of the evil times coming 
upon the Chnrch, a tone of sadness in it ; but, with 
regard to his own calling, is a wonderful testimony 
to posterity of the spirit in which the last trial was 
looked forward to and encountered. It is probable, 
from the same Epistle, that all his companions were 
christians not equally courageous. Christians, as a body, had 
little of that spirit which flies into the face of death. 
They were, in fact, a timid flock. In every perse- 
cution their first impulse was to flee. Equally 
removed from the high-wrought fanaticism which 
nerved the Jews of that period, and from the stoic 
indifference which made the heathen scoff at dan- 
ger, their courage was merely that of a good con- 
science and good hope; and when taken at una- 
wares was often found deficient. It had this merit, 
however, that though it could flee, it could not 
yield. Simon Peter, it is said, showed some signs 
of his original infirmity almost to the last moment. 
He was fleeing from Eome when, the Lord met him 
and turned him back. But S. Paul was naturally 
of a different temperament. His splendid genius 
was sustained by a tense and uncompromising spirit, 
ever on the alert, never taken at fault, keen, fiery, 
and almost fierce in its rapidity of movement, which 
caused the name of the Benjamite wolf 14 to cleave 



14 " Benjamin shall ravin as a a good sense ; for to the old re- 
wolf," etc. : Gen. xlix. 27. It is ligious mind all of God's crea- 
probable, however, that the tures had something beautiful 
phrase was always understood in and good in them, and the ser- 



CH. V.] POSITION" OF S. PAUL AND HIS COMPANY. 33 

to him in a complimentary sense, when in some 
respects it seemed singularly inappropriate to his 
character. These being the natural traits of the 
Apostle, the quiet, familiar, almost business-like 
tone of the last of his Epistles is the more remark- 
able. 



CHAPTEE V. 

POSITION OF S. PAUL AND HIS COMPANY. 

S. Paul thus labored, seemingly a supernumerary, 
one "last and least," "born out of due time," and 
"separate from his brethren" of the original Apos- s.Pauitho 

x ox type of an 

tolic college : yet, surpassing them all in the enlarged 
variety, extent, and success of his labors, he be- 
came in reality "the fruitful bough" of the Apos- 
tolate, the representative of the Ministry as en- 
larged to meet the wants of the Gentile Churches. 
He is the type of that second Apostolate that sprang 
up, when the rod of the ministry "budded" with 
new life : when God gave the word, and a great com- 
pany of Preachers went forth to all the borders of 
the earth. 

When our Lord chose the Twelve from among The 
those " disciples," who had been with Him in His founda- 
ministry, His first reference would seem to have stones. 
been to the twelve tribes, and to the Theocracy as 
the type of the perpetual Divine government of the 

pent, lion, eagle, wolf, etc., were cient, more apt to look at the 
as often symbols of good as of eagle's claws, than at his heaven- 
evil. In this respect, the modern piercing eye. 
mind is less genial than the an- 
2* 



34 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. I. 

Church. That the foundation might be laid distinctly 
in that people with which the everlasting covenant 
had been made, He gave the first formal commission 
to Twelve, and Twelve only. Hence the solicitude 
of the Eleven to supply the place of Judas. 1 For 
consist- tne sa ^ e °f typical consistency there must be twelve 
enc y- to receive the great gift of the Spirit. In the new 
Pentecost, as in the old, the tribes must all be rep- 
resented. As a four-squared city, with twelve gates, 
twelve angels, twelve foundation-stones, the new Je- 
rusalem is let down out of Heaven, and begins to 
shed her light upon the nations of them that are 
saved. 2 

But the historic continuity of the old Church and 
new being thus most fully and symmetrically ex- 
pressed, in the organizing of the original Apostolic 
College, in the preaching of the Gospel for so many 
years to the Jews almost exclusively, and afterwards 
in making the first offer 3 of salvation to them in all 
The places where they were found, there was no longer 
typical of any need of strict adherence to the typical arrange- 
structure. ment. The fruitful bough was to run over the wall 
of Judaic concisionism. The "Twelve" were to ex- 
pand into the " Seventy." 4 Accordingly, as soon as 



1 It is to be noticed that" Seventy heads of families, proph- 
Judas fell before the Apostolic ets, elders, who were called to 
commission was formally given, participate in the ministry of 
He was never, therefore, an Apos- Moses. The first reference, 
tie in the full sense of the word. therefore, of the Seventy, as of 

2 Rev. xxi. 10-27. the Twelve, is to the Mosaic dis- 

3 This course was followed pensation. But behind all these 
even by the "Apostles to the passages there are the Seventy 
Gentiles." families of the nations, among 

4 This number naturally leads whom the whole earth was di- 
one to such texts as Exod. i. 5 ; vided : Gen. x. ; in which chap- 
xv. 21 ; Numb. xi. 16 ; xxiv. 25 ; ter, again, we find not only the 
Ezek. viii. 11: that is, to the seventy names, representative 



CH. V.] POSITION OF S. PAUL AND HIS COMPANY. 



35 



the Church had found an open door for its larger 
mission, and had begun to go forth beyond the 
bounds of Israel proper, the number of Apostles 
was indefinitely increased. 

With this multiplication of the chief ministry the 
name of S. Paul is particularly connected. His call ^Jon. 8 
to the Apostolate synchronized with that outgoing 
of Church life and shedding of the Spirit upon the 
Gentiles, that second Pentecost, as it were, which 
followed the martyrdom of S. Stephen : & his actual 
commencement of mission work with the gathering 
of a Hellenic Church in Antioch, and with the de- 
parture, one by one, of the Apostles to their more 
distant fields. His name (with that of Barnabas, and 
many others) is thus associated with the outermost 
of the three great circles of the Apostolic mission. 
With Jerusalem, Judaea, Samaria, he had little to 



of the nations, but twelve par- 
ticularly distinguished as fathers 
or founders ; so that in the twelve, 
as well as in the seventy, there 
seems to he an ultimate reference 
to the Church universal. This is 
confirmed by Rev. iv. 4, where 
twenty-four Elders are round 
about the throne ; viz., twelve for 
the Jewish and twelve for the 
Gentile Church. I may here ob- 
serve, that when numbers are 
used in SS. for symbolic pur- 
poses, we are not to regard 
them always as mathematically 
correct. Thus, in Matt. i. the 
fourteen generations are not all 
the generations that might be 
counted in the period given. So 
the seventy and the twelve were 
not all the Disciples of our Lord ; 
for in Acts, i. 15, we find the 
number of the names to be about 



one hundred and twenty. The 
same may be said of the list of 
names in Gen. x. On the whole, 
it seems to me that in choosing 
twelve and seventy under the 
general name of Disciples, our 
Lord provided for a subsequent 
enlargement of the Apostolate, 
and guarded against the mistake 
of those who would superstiti- 
ously confine the office "to the ex- 
act number of twelve; or, who 
would make any other distinc- 
tion than that of mere priority 
of commission, between the origi- 
nal Apostolic College and those 
who in course of time were added 
to it. 

5 This, according to Dr. Jarvis, 
was the end of the seventy weeks 
of Daniel. See Church of the Re- 
deemed, Period V., pp. 247, 497. 



36 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. I. 

do. His witness was to the world. Among those 
twelve " names," which S. John represents as writ- 
ten on the "twelve foundations" of the "great 
city," his name is not included. 

It is of great importance, therefore, that S. Paul, 
as the type of the enlarged Apostolate, was in point 
of commission, of authority, and in every thing, in 

totife ^ ac ^ exce pt priority of calling, fully equal to " them 

Twelve. W nich were Apostles before" him ; that " the uncir- 
cumcision was committed" to him as largely " as the 
circumcision was unto Peter ;" that " James, Ce- 
phas, and John," those universally acknowledged 
" pillars," perceived the grace given unto him, and 
extended to him and Barnabas " the right hand of 
fellowship." The Ministry to the Gentiles was thus 
put on a footing of entire equality with the original 
Ministry to the Jews. The branches grafted into the 
old stock of Israel received all the power and virtue 
of the stock itself. 

Of that numerous band of sons, disciples, col- 

compan- leagues, or fellow-laborers, who accompanied S. 

s.paui. Paul in his travels, and some of whose names are 
associated with his, apparently on equal terms, in 

Barnabas, the superscription of the Epistles, Barnabas parted 
from him in the second missionary journey, and tak- 
ing Mark with him, labored afterwards in Cyprus, 
his native country. So long as the two remained to 
gether, Barnabas held the position of leader ; so that 
the heathen distinguished them respectively as Jupi- 
ter and Mercurius. He seems to have been a man 
of great suavity and dignity of character, and we 
may infer from his conduct with regard to Mark, 
that in his proper sphere as a "son of consolation" 
he showed no little firmness. It is interesting to 



CH. V.] POSITION OF S. PAUL AND HIS COMPANY. 37 

notice, that all the intimates of S. Paul, so far as we 
have the means of judging, were distinguished by 
traits of character the complementary opposites of 
his own. 

Timothy, a disciple or son, and, as he appears in Timothy. 
many places, a colleague of S. Paul, had a feminine 
delicacy, amounting it would seem to something 
like natural timidity 6 of character. But the grace 
of God, in his case as in that of other Apostles, 
proved superior to any such infirmity ; and S. Paul 
regarded him with peculiar and tender affection. 
During the life-time of S. Paul, he had frequent oc- 
casion to exercise temporarily, in various places to 
which he was sent, the gift and authority of an 
Apostle. 7 After his death, he became, according to 
the unanimous testimony of the ancients, the settled 
Bishop of Ephesus in Asia Minor ; a post, for which 
his gentleness and refinement of character seem emi- 
nently to have fitted him. Titus, in like manner, is Titus. 
said to have become the permanent chief-pastor of 
the Church in Crete. Silas, or Silvanus, and Sos- siias, and 
thenes were also reckoned among Apostles, their ° 
names, like that of Timothy, being associated with 
S. Paul's in letters to the Churches ; but of their po- 
sition in later times there is no certain record. The 
same remark applies to Epaphras, Epaphroditus, 
Tychicus, Onesimus, Carpus, Erastus, Crescens, and 
many others to whom tradition assigns the name 
"Apostle and Bishop," and sometimes "Martyr." 
But tradition is a sieve, which seldom preserves 
more than the husks of a life. The name and office, 
and sometimes the field of labor, may remain : the 

6 1 Cor. xvi. 10 ; 2 Tim. i. 6-8. 

7 Rom. xri. 21 ; 2 Cor. i. 19 ; Phil. ii. 19 ; 1 Thess. iii. 2. 



38 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. I. 

deeds, the words, the finer traits of character, almost 
invariably escape. 8 

s. Luke. S. Luke is one of the few companions of S. Paul, 
to whom tradition does not appear to have assigned 
a particular local charge. He lived, it is said, to a 
great age. He was with S. Paul in his last imprison- 
ment ; and from the peculiar summary of trials in 
the third chapter of the Second Epistle to Timothy, 
as compared with the account of the first missionary 
journey related in the Acts, 9 one might conjecture, 
that the Apostle, when he wrote, had been quite re- 
cently engaged in recounting to the Evangelist that 
early portion of his history. Death may have inter- 
vened, before he came to the period of his more re- 
cent labors, after the first imprisonment in Rome: 
and as S. Luke wrote only what he had seen him- 
self, or had received from eye-witnesses, 10 the abrupt 
conclusion of the Acts may be thus accounted for. 

John John Mark, frequently confounded with S. Mark 

the Evangelist, was probably the same whom S. Paul 
commends to the Colossians " as a nephew of S. Bar- 
nabas ; who was with the same Apostle in Rome, 
during his first imprisonment, as a fellow-laborer ; 
and whose services he particularly desired at a later 
period. 12 If so, it is a pleasing reflection, that the 
young man, who abandoned the two Apostles in 
their first missionary journey, and was the occasion 
of a fierce contention in the second, afterwards was 
enabled so amply to redeem his character. 

These, and many others, some of whose names are 

8 Tillemont, Memoires pour ser- 9 Tim. iii. 1 1 ; Acts, xiv. 

vir Ob VHistoire Ecclfaiastique, 10 Luke, i. 2. 

gives with discrimination, but not " Coloss. iv. 10. 

in a skeptical spirit, all that is 12 Philem. 24 ; 2 Tim. iv. 11. 
known on this and similar subjects. 



Mark. 



CH. VI.] MISSION OF THE TWELVE. 39 

preserved only in obscure traditions, constituted the 
company of S. Paul : his Apostolic staff, as it were, 
by whose active cooperation, as Apostles or Messen- His Hei P - 
gers of the Churches, he was enabled to maintain a succes- 
constant and vigilant superintendence of the vast 
and growing field of his planting. Among these, 
also, he found the trustworthy men to whom he 
could commit the whole burden of his own " care 
of the Churches," when he was obliged to leave it. 



CHAPTEE VI. 

MISSION OF THE TWELVE MADNESS OF JEWS AND 

HEATHEN. 

Of the labors of the Twelve in the wider field of pe 

-, t t . . Twelve. 

their mission, the records are surprisingly scant, and 
the traditions unsatisfactory. Three only of their 
number received surnames from the Lord ; and, 
with the exception of these three, their names are 
written only on the Judaic foundation-stones. In- 
deed, one of this smaller number, S. James, sur- 
named the Greater, the elder brother of S. John, s. James 

the 

was taken to his rest by martyrdom 1 before the Gen- Greater. 
tile superstructure was generally begun. 

S." Andrew, the first called of the Apostles, ins. Andrew 
whom we recognize the amiable traits of his brother 
Simon without the fervid genius of that great Apostle, 
is said to have preached in Scythia and Sogdiana, 

1 Acts, xii. 2. 



40 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [BK. I. 

and was crucified in Greece. The letter describing 
his death, professedly written by the Presbyters and 
Deacons of Achaia, is either spurious or grossly in- 
terpolated. 

s.Thomas. The name of S. Thomas is associated with the 
memory of evangelical labors in Parthia, Persia, 
and India ; though the application of the last of 
these names is somewhat doubtful. S. James the 

tiiei^ss ^ ess 5 the son °f Alpheeus, has been commonly 
identified by Latin writers with James the Just, the 

s. Jude. nrs t Bishop of Jerusalem. If not thus identified, it 
is quite uncertain where he labored. S. Jude, sur- 
named Thaddseus, or Lebbseus, the brother of 
James, journeyed to Lybia, it is said, and preached 
also in Arabia, Idumsea, and Mesopotamia. He is 
not to be confounded with another Thaddaeus, one 
of the Seventy, who in fulfilment of a promise said 
to have been made by our Lord to Abgar, 2 King of 
Edessa, went as Apostle to that city, and labored 

s. pwiip. there with great honor and success. S. Philip, fre- 
quently confounded with Philip, one of the seven 

ss. Bar- Deacons, preached in Scythia and Phrygia. S. Bar- 
tholomew, ' j- «/ . 
Matthew, tholomew went to Armenia and India : S. Matthew 

Matthias, # # ' 

and Simon. an( i S. Matthias to Ethiopia; S. Simon, the Chanan- 
ite, to some part of Mesopotamia. The name Si- 
mon, however, was so common among the Pentecos- 
tal preachers, that the two Apostles so named had 
many things accredited to them in tradition which 
in all probability belonged to other evangelists. 
It has been generally believed, that the majority 

2 Euseb., i. 13. The Letter of ever, have been a verbal answer 

our Lord, preserved in the ar- from our Lord, committed to wri- 

chives of Edessa, is supported by ting from memory by some of the 

respectable testimony, but does King's ministers. See, also, Eva- 

not look genuine. It may, how- grius, Eccl. Hist., iv. 27. 



CH. VI.] . MISSION OF THE TWELVE. 41 

of the Apostles, and, perhaps, all of them except S. 
John, suffered death by martyrdom. 3 This is ad- causes of 
mitted to have been the case with four out of the five tion. 
whose history is best known. One thing is certain, 
that wherever the first preachers went they carried 
their lives in their hands. Without judging harshly 
of the Roman laws, which, considering the general 
character of the superstitions they were aimed at, 4 
were sufficiently tolerant, the Gospel was in its very 
nature a martyrium : a testimony unto death, before 
magistrates, kings, and nations, against all that was 
held sacred by the bulk of the heathen world. Had 
it been content to take a place among the crowd of 
national or local superstitions, it would probably 
have continued unmolested. But such a position 
was against its very nature. It came before men as 
a novelty, which provoked contempt ; it was uncom- 
promising, which awakened hatred ; it was wonder- 
fully successful, which touched the innumerable 
nerves of self-interest, local or sect pride, prejudice, 
superstition, and the like, which lie thick beneath 
the surface of civilized society. The Jews resented 
it as a heresy. The heathen looked upon it with 
suspicion, or contempt, as a corruption of Judaism. 
To men of the world, generally, its condemnation of 
tolerated sins and its bold predictions of righteous 
judgment would present themselves in the light of 
odium generis humani : a gloomy antagonism to the 
reckless and jovial spirit of cultivated society. 

All this is plain enough from that portion of 
Church history recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. 

3 Mosheim's argument to the sage from Clement of Alexandria, 
contrary is founded on a very and from Polycrates of Ephesus. 
partial interpretation of a pas- 4 Sacra peregrina. 



42 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [be. T. 

In those simple narratives we see the rancor of the 
uve U foi U ce" ^ ews awakened, not in Palestine only, but in every 
place of their dispersion, at the first indications of 
prosperity on the part of the Gospel, kindling into 
more furious hostility as the signs of success in- 
creased, and communicating itself like a sort of con- 
tagious phrensy to the better disposed Gentiles. 
But at the point where the inspired history ends, 
the state of the world was growing worse daily. 
The causes of persecution, whether in the Jewish 
or heathen world, were rapidly accumulating in 
overwhelming force. 

From the reign of the Emperor Tiberius till the 
destruction of the holy City, the Jews were becom- 
Madness ing constantly more entangled in seditions, tumults, 
jews. plots, and insurrectionary movements. They had 
chosen Barabbas instead of Christ ; and every Bar- 
abbas who offered himself to them was hailed as a 
Messiah. The wanton tyranny of Caligula exasper- 
ated this spirit, by placing the abomination of idols 
in Jewish houses of worship. Hence riots and mas- 
sacres, both in Egypt and Palestine. 5 The reign of 
Claudius, Caligula's successor, was marked by similar 
commotions ; and in a disturbance that took place in 
Jerusalem, during the week of the Passover, more 
than twenty thousand persons are said to have been 
a.d. 54^68. slain, or trampled to death. A famine of several 
years added to the sufferings of this period. TThen 
Nero came to the throne, the sacred City and the 
whole of Palestine had fallen a prey to fanatical 
sects ; and robber bands and assassins flourished 
under the guise of patriotism and religion. A 

5 Pbilo in Flacc, etc. ; Joseph. Antiq. xviii. 8. 



CH. VI.] MISSION OF THE TWELVE. 43 

glimpse is afforded us of this state of things, and 
of its effect upon the security of the Christians, in 
the account, given us in the Acts, of S. Paul's 
eventful visit to the sacred city of his people. Not 
long after, similar tumults arising, James of Jerusa- 
lem was put to death. This, again, was followed a. d. 65. 
soon by the commencement of the Judaic war ; in 
consequence of which, according to the testimony 
of Josephus, 6 a fearful commotion seized upon the 
populace throughout all Syria, and everywhere the 
inhabitants of the cities destroyed the Jews without 
mercy, so that the streets were strewn with unburied 
and naked corpses. 

It was a time, in fact, of universal madness and ? f th ^ 

' Heathen. 

misrule. Nero s tyranny was succeeded by the 
wilder, and still more bloody anarchy of Galba, 
Otho, and Yitellius. The page of the philosophic 
historian of the Romans is as black as that of the a.d. gs-to. 
learned Jew, with the tragic record of treasons, plots, 
conspiracies, portents in the natural and civil world, 
horrible massacres, and a recklessness of human 
life passing all imagination. In Rome, where civil 
war was raging from street to street, the mob looked 
on and applauded, as at a gladiator show. " If any 
one hid in a house or shop, they shouted to the sol- 
diers to drag him out, and slay him." For, as the 
historian 7 fearfully adds, " the military were so in- 
tent on carnage, that the' greater part of the booty 
fell to the populace. There were all the horrors of Rome. 
a city taken by storm, with all the merriment and 
licentiousness of the most luxurious times of peace : 
battles and piles of corpses ; eating-houses and 

6 Quoted by Euseb. Feci. Hist. ii. 26. 7 Tacit. Hist. iii. 83. 



44 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. I. 

baths ; soldiers with bloody swords, harlots in 
flaunting dresses : all was so mixed up, that it 
would be difficult to say whether the city was in a 
fury, or on a frolic." Nor did the rural districts of 
Italy escape the common woe. " Everywhere there 
were rapes, robbery, and bloodshed ; citizens dress- 

itaiy. e( j themselves as soldiers to assassinate their ene- 
mies ; the soldiers seized every thing they could lay 
hands on, without rebuke from their superiors. 
Italy was not merely exhausted, it was fairly tramp- 
led into ruin by the wantonness of foot and horse." ' 

Prodigies To add to the terrors of the times, the popular mind 

and omens. , 7 x x 

was haunted with prodigies and omens. " In the 
vestibule of the Capitol, Victory dropped her 
chariot-reins ; from a cell of Juno's temple there 
came forth a gigantic spectre ; on a serene and 
cloudless day, the statue of the Emperor Julius 
turned round and faced the East ; an ox in Etruria 
opened its mouth and spake." Such stories, little 
heeded in times of peace, but at this period readily 
believed and circulated, show at least the state of 
the public mind. It was more remarkable, that real 
disasters, such as an unprecedented overflow of the 
Tiber, followed by a general famine, made less im- 
pression as calamities than as omens. 9 Every afflic- 
tion cast a shadow still blacker than itself. 

Under these circumstances, the fearful picture, 

drawn by the Jewish historian, of the horrors, por- 

Generai tents and calamities of his country, may be taken as 

ties! imi " a sample of the condition of the whole world. " No 

generation from the beginning of the world was 

more fruitful in wickedness. The misfortunes of 

8 Tacit. Hist. ii. 56. 9 Tacit. Hkt. i. 86. 



CH. VI.] MISSION OF THE TWELVE. 45 

the Jews were such, that the calamities of all men 
from the beginning of the world would be found 
slight in comparison ; with them." It was Gessius 
Floras, appointed Procurator in the tenth year of JJjJj^ 8 
Nero, who by his cruelty and rapacity provoked 
them to rebellion against the Eoman arms. The 
heathen of the various cities in which the Jews 
dwelt were encouraged to insult and harass them ; 
and when outrages of this kind had excited them to 
insurrection, they were massacred in crowds, with- 
out pity or remorse. In this way thousands suffered 
in Ascalon, Csesarea, Ptolemais, and in the cities of 
Syria and Egypt. Cestius Gallus, the governor of 
Syria, might have prevented the rebellion by meas- 
ures of ordinary prudence and justice ; or when it 
began might easily have crushed it in the bud. He 
did neither. His course was vigorous enough to in- 
crease the exasperation, but too dilatory to lead to 
any result. A feeble attempt to take Jerusalem was First siege 
followed by a precipitate retreat, which degenerated iem, 
into a flight and a panic. The Jews hung upon his 
rear, slew his best troops, and, elated by this easy 
triumph, carried on the war thenceforward in a 
spirit of desperation that hardly fell short of mad- 
ness. For seven years society was completely dis- 
organized. It was a conflict unillumined by a ray 
of hope. Suicide was preferred to submission to the 
Pomans. Yet submission to the Pomans was felt to 
be a far less evil than the triumph of the robbers 
and assassins, by whom, for the most part, the cause 
of rebellion was sustained. In short, the prophecy 
of our Lord was fulfilled to the letter. 10 Things 

10 S. Matt. xxiv. 22. The remarkable coincidences, between the 



46 HISTOEY OF THE CHUECH. [BK. I. 

came to such a pass in the end, that unless those 
days of mutual extermination had been mercifully 
shortened, no flesh would have been left alive. 

That terrible period, then, which is best described 

as the coming of our Lord in judgment upon the 

The Lord's J ews — the sixth in order of those tremendous epochs 

coming. J- 

which prefigure the final Judgment, 11 — was a time 
in which it was not only natural that the shepherds 
of the Flock should be smitten, but equally natural 
that the Flock should be too much disturbed to keep 
a careful record of the calamitous visitation. Chris- 
tians were hated by the Jews, and equally hated as 
connected with the Jews. They were a ready and 
safe mark for private and public malice. And of 
the Roman magistrates in those days, while some 
might temporize like Pilate, some like Gallio might 
behave with a disdainful impartiality, and a few 
like Pliny might feel disposed to pity the oppressed : 
the great majority, no doubt, would easily give way 
to the outcry of the rabble. In the confusion that 
thus ensued, we can find the only satisfactory ex- 
planation of the vagueness of Church tradition, with 
regard to the latter days of most of the Apostles. 

prophecy of our Lord and the tioii of Sodom, the Drowning of 

language of Josephus in his ac- Pharaoh, the Euin of Solomon's 

count of the Judaic War, are well Temple, and the final Destruction 

pointed out in "the Plain Com- of Jerusalem, with the Abrogation 

mentary on the Four Holy Gos- of the Jewish Polity. For many 

pels." useful suggestions on this subject 

11 In the xxivth of S. Matthew, see Jarvis's Church of the Jie- 

etc. The Judgment of Jerusalem, deemed. Dr. Jarvis, however, 

of Sodom, of the Flood, etc., all divides the history of the world 

lead the mind forward to the final before the Christian era into Jive 

consummation. The six judg- periods, including the day in 

ments are, the Expulsion from Paradise in the period which ter- 

Paradise, the Flood, the Destruc- minates with the flood. 



CH. VII.] THE JEWISH CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 47 



CHAPTER YH. 

THE JEWISH CHRISTLAN CHURCH. 

Jerusalem continued, till the time of the great 
Judgment upon that city, to be the centre of Apos- 
tolic conference and communion ; the centre especi- 
ally of that Christian Israel " scattered abroad," SjgJgJ. 
which, though absorbed in the one name of Judah, ian Israel - 
was the historical continuation of all the twelve 
tribes, 1 and was tolerated in the observance of Mo- 
saic rites. 

James, the universally respected head of this great *[ a ™ es the 
stock, was eminently fitted for his peculiar and diffi- 
cult position. He is said to have been consecrated 
to God from his birth, after the manner of the an- 
cient Xazarites, and to have lived the life of a gen- 
uine ascetic. Foreseeing the judgments that were 
coming on his guilty nation, and wrestling continu- 
ally in prayer for their conversion, he acquired 
among them the title of ZaddicJc, the Just, or Oph- 
lias, the Bulwark of the People. His appointment 
to the Bishopric of Jerusalem is attributed by some 
to our Lord himself. It is certain, that he was ad- 
mitted to the honor of a special interview with his 
Master, after the Resurrection. 2 

As head of the Circumcision, "myriads" of whom 
had been converted before the last visit of S. Paul to 

1 James, i. 1. 2 1 Cor. xv. 7. 



48 HISTOKY OF THE CHUKCH. [bk. 



His rela 
tions to 



Jerusalem, 3 he was naturally exposed to the tempta- 
s. Paul. ^ on f f ormm g a party, or separate school, in the 
Church. There is no proof, however, that he yield- 
ed to this temptation. On the contrary, his rela- 
tions to the Apostles of the Gentiles seem ever to 
have been of the most friendly kind. S. Paul evi- 
dently regarded him with reverence and affection. 
James, in his turn, not only gave to Paul and Bar- 
nabas the right hand of fellowship, but in reference 
to the questions mooted by the Juclaizing faction, 
expressed himself with a firmness and decision 4 not 
inferior to that of the great Apostle himself. 

And towards those of his own kin who had not as 
to his own yet received the Gospel he acted, there is reason to 
believe, with a wise, and charitable, and Christian- 
like forbearance. He avoided every thing calcu- 
lated to excite the prejudices of the Jews. Those 
who visited Jerusalem from among the Gentile 
Churches were required to observe the same rule. 5 

It may have been owing to this habit of noble as 
well as politic forbearance, that the Epistle of S. 
James, addressed as it is to the twelve tribes, and 
almost ignoring the difference between Jew and 
Christian, is so extremely reserved on the distinct 
tive doctrines of the Gospel. With the Lord nigh 
at hand, with the Judge standing before the door, 8 
and with a profound fellow-feeling for the difficul- 
ties and perplexities of the Jewish mind, the earnest 
and sober-minded Pastor may have felt, that the 
orthodoxy needed for the conversion of his country- 
men was that of the heart and life, rather than of 
the head. Of faith, 7 in the form of dogmatism, the 

3 Acts, xxi. 20. B Acts, xxi. 17-26. 7 James, ii. 14-26. 

• 4 Acts, xv. 13-21. 6 James, v. 7-9. 



His 

Epistle. 



CH. vn.] THE JEWISH CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 49 

Synagogue, whether Jewish or Jewish-Christian, had 
enough and to spare. The Narne of Christ might ^rdST* 
easily become, like the name of Moses, a mere sym- strife - 
bol of lip-worship, a mere rallying-cry for the strife 
of tongues. In the bitterness of controversy, " that 
worthy name" might possibly be taken in vain. 8 
Rather than incur such a risk, let the yea of faith 
be yea, and the nay simply nay. Christ is not con- 
fessed by vigorous asseverations. He is not heard 
iu strife. In peace the fruits of righteousness are 
sown. The dew of Divine wisdom distils from a 
tranquil sky. 9 In a community occupying so criti- 
cal a position, standing, as it were, between a doom- 
ed nation and a Judge near at hand, patience should 
be allowed to have her perfect work. The husband- 
man waiteth for the rain. Job waited for the end, 
and prayed for the friends who vexed him. Elias, a 
man like other meiif a great and fiery heart full of 
passionate aches and yearnings, waited and prayed 
for rain ; and the rain came at his request, and the 2?j f Jjjg 
parched earth yielded fruit. Such prayer, such pa- 
tience, might still be found availing. The sinner 
might yet be converted from the error of his ways. 10 
With the tenderness, then, of that mother, who won 
her child from the precipice, not by warning cries, 
but by a silent act of instinctive maternal love^| 
James yearned for the salvation of all Israel ; and 
in his solicitude spoke with bated breath, lest the 
sharp distinctive word might startle them into mad- 
ness, and so precipitate their ruin. 

Such seems to have been the spirit of Judaic Christ- 

8 James, ii. Y ; v. 1 2. " Greek Anthology, alluded to 

9 James, iii. 13-18. in Keble's Christian Year — 
10 James, v. *7-20. " Commination." 

3 



50 HISTOEY OF THE CHURCH. [BK. I. 

The spirit ianity, in its better aspect. It was the religion of 

christian- intercession ; the embodiment of the Divine heart's 
desire that all Israel should be saved. It was the 
living continuation of the prayer of Jesus on the 
Cross. "While Gentile Christianity, bold, free, and 
full of joy, was advancing Joshua-like in the line 
of spiritual aggression, Jerusalem, like Moses, was 
content with an humbler posture. She prayed for 
the victory which freer hands achieved. 

The end of James, as related by the most ancient 
of Church Historians, 12 accords entirely with this 
view of his character and position. 

Advantage was taken of the temporary anarchy 
that followed the death of Festus the Roman gov- 

The end of ernor to stir up a tumult against the Christians. 

A.T.lk In the midst of the excitement some of the Sad- 
ducees addressed themselves to James. " Tell us," 
said they, "Who is Jesus?" 13 # He answered, "The 
Saviour." Thereupon many of the Jews believed, 
both among the rulers and among the common peo- 
ple. But the Scribes and Pharisees, alarmed at the 
growing expectation of a speedy advent of Jesus in 
judgment upon their nation, determined to appeal 
to James's conservative and patriotic feelings. " We 
entreat thee, restrain the people, who are led astray 
gfter Jesus, as if He were the Messiah!" Then, 

12 Eegesippus — Euseb. ii. 23. ing among- these conjectures, it 

13 Eusebius lias it, " What is may be remarked, that the vivid 
the, door of Jesus ?" — A manifest expectation of the Lord's coming 
allusion to a common Christian speedily in judgment, doubtless 
phrase, but difficult to reconcile made such phrases, e.g., "the 
with James's answer. Mosheim Judge is at the door," more cur- 
and others have supposed that rent than usual and a desire to 

/ Eusebius has mistranslated his know the meaning of these phra- 
authority, and various readings ses may have suggested the pe- 
are suggested. Without choos- culiar form of the question. 



Con- 
fession. 



CH. VII.] THE JEWISH CHRISTIAN" CHUECH. 51 

conducting him to a conspicuous place on one of the 
wings of the Temple, they asked him the same ques- 
tion that the Sadducees had put to him before : " O 
Zaddick, declare to us, What is the door of Jesus, g, s si 
the Crucified !" He answered, " Why do ye ask 
me respecting Jesus the Son of Man? He is now 
sitting in the heavens, on the right hand of Power, 
and is about to come on the clouds of Heaven." 
Thereupon many of the people cried out, " Hosanna 
to the Son of David !" But others came behind 
him, and cast him down from the Temple ; and as he 
raised himself, and knelt, repeating for the last time 
that prayer of his Master, " Father, forgive them, 
for they know not what they do," he was cruelly 
despatched with clubs and stones. 

He died, as he had lived, a patriot saint. The 
people knew this to be his character, and his mar- Honor 
tyrdom was spoken of among them as a public ca- him. 
lamity. He was buried with honor near the Temple, 
and a pillar marked the place of his death. 

The remorse of the Jews was increased by the 
signs of coming wrath which at that time began to signs of 
thicken around the mother city, and to prepare the u e 
minds of the inhabitants for some terrible event. 

It was about this time, for example, that one Je- 
sus, the son of Ananias, began to harrow men's souls 
with that terrible cry of Woe, which resounded for warnings, 
so many years through the streets and along the 
walls of the devoted city. With this were many 
other signs of a similar description. A fiery sword 
was seen waving in the air ; embattled hosts appeared 
to be contending in the sky ; the East gate of the 
Temple swung open of itself, and voices were heard 
crying, Let us go hence ! In short, men's hearts 



52 HISTOEY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. I. 

were failing them for fear, and the popular mind 
was haunted with gloomy presentiments of impend 
ing judgment. 14 

After the death of James, Symeon, a son of Cleo- 
successors phas and a cousin of the Lord, was. for that reason 

of James. -«- ' ' 

perhaps, elected in his place. Down to that time 
the Jewish Christian Church, though somewhat de- 
generated 15 from its purity and simplicity, had re- 
mained, as the ancients expressed it, a virgin in the 
faith. Now the seeds of heresy began to spring up. 

seeds of One Thibutis, a disappointed candidate for the office 
of Bishop, became the ringleader of a faction. The 
bias that existed towards low and fleshly views of 
the nature of the Messiah, the naturally disputatious 
and rationalistic turn of the Jewish mind, the dis- 
turbances that would necessarily arise from the 
gradual discontinuance of Mosaic rites on the part 
of the more enlightened, the general madness of the 
times, and last not least, the increasing isolation of 
Judaic Christianity, were so many seeds, as it were, 
of discord and dissension ; so that the spirit of fac- 
tion having once secured an entrance, every sort of 
error found in the divided flock its appropriate 
prey. 

In the mean time, however, the woes denounced so 
long beforehand against Jerusalem had come to a 
head. Seven years of rebellion against the Romans, 

Jewish attended with atrocities of every imaginable descrip- 
tion, had only exasperated the intense hatred with 
which the foreign yoke was regarded. Finally, the 
city was besieged by Titus, whose father Yespasian 

14 Tacitus and Josephus both and the Epistle of S. James show 
mention these signs. that this degeneracy had begun. 

15 The Epistle to the Hebrews 






CH. VII.] THE JEWISH CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 53 

had been called from the leadership in Judsea to the 
empire of the world ; and after a mad straggle, un- 
paralleled in the history of human wickedness and 
misery, it was taken and destroyed. The Temple tak^S. 
was demolished. Such of the inhabitants as sur- 70 or 72 - 
vived the horrors of the siege were sold for slaves, 
and scattered once more among the nations. 

The Christian Jews alone escaped the common 
fate. Remembering the predictions and command- 
ment of the Lord, they had taken advantage of a 
lull in the storm of war, just after the first siege of 
the city and the repulse of the Roman army under ^J^fJ 13 
Cestius Gallus, 16 and had withdrawn in a body to g lla > A - D - 
Pella, a city of Decapolis. There many of them re- 
mained, continuing the observance of Mosaic rites. 
Others returned, and dwelt, a sad flock, among the 
ruins of the city. In a subsequent persecution under 
Trajan, Symeon their Bishop received the crown of 
martyrdom ; and Justus, after a factious opposition, 
was elected in his place. About the same time 
manv thousands of the Jews were converted. The conver- 

<J m sions. 

terror and the ruin which dogged them everywhere, 
must have added force in the minds of the more de- 
vout, to the arguments and claims of Christianity. . 
Justus died early in the second century, and was 
followed bv a rapid succession of twelve Bishops, Jewish 

• n • n . . Bishops. 

whose briei episcopates have led to the supposition 
of a violent persecution during that period. It may 
have been, that in choosing their chief pastors the 
Jewish Christians attached an undue importance to 
age, and to fleshly connection with the house of Da- 

16 Josephus mentions, that " af- parted from the city as from a 
ter the calamity of Cestius, many sinking ship." Jos. de Bell. Ja- 
of the most illustrious Jews de- daic. 



54 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. I. 

vid. Their spiritual rulers, therefore, were in all 
probability more venerable than efficient. 

In fact, Judaic Christianity had already accom- 
Mission of plished its mission in the world. Its peculiar rites, 

Judaism ^ -i-ita i i 

ended. tolerated by the Apostles on the principle that 
" what decay eth and waxeth old is ready to vanish 
away" had lost all warrant for their continuance 
from the time that the Divine judgment had gone 
forth against Jerusalem and the Temple.- Forty 
years 17 God had spoken to the Jews in their own 
tongue, as it were. Forty years He had waited for 
their repentance. To persevere longer in a system 
unfavorable to the free spirit of the Gospel, would 
only separate the Hebrews from their brethren of 
Christendom at large, and subject them to the 
dwarfing and deadening influence of sect and party 
feeling. 

It is probable that this truth dawned but gradu- 
ally on the minds of the Hebrew Christians. Being 
recognized by some, and more or less repudiated by 
others, it proved the occasion, as it were, of a new 
sifting of the nation. The strict Judaizers separated 
Nazarenes by degrees from their larger-minded brethren. A 
samps!?' sect of Nazarenes arose, legalists and purists of the 
ans " narrowest kind. The Ebionites, more actively ra- 
tionalistic, adhered to the law, rejected the Divinity 
of Christ, and covered the nakedness of their unbelief 
with shreds of Gnostic speculation. The Sampsseans 
fell back upon a supposed primitive Jacobite tradi- 

17 Our Lord's ministry began former temple. Many other co- 

about the year 30; the clestruc- incidences, manifestly showing 

tion of the Temple was in the that Judaism had come to an 

year 70, or 72, on the same day end, are to be found in Dr. Jar- 

of the week and month, on which vis's Church of the Redeemed; 

Nebuchadnezzar had burnt the also, in Foulkes' Man. of Ec. Hist. 



CH. VII.] THE JEWISH CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 55 

tion. These, and perhaps many other obscure sects, 
sprang in course of time from the now cold and slug- 
gish blood of Judaic Christianity. 

The deliverance of the mother Church of Christen- second 

ovei - throw, 

doin from influences of this kind seems to have been a. d. 135. 
consummated by the second, and, so far as the 
Circumcision was concerned, decisive overthrow of 
the sacred city. 

The Emperor Hadrian, provoked by the long series 
of rebellions, which the infatuated Jews continued to 
renew ; provoked especially by the insurrection of Bar 
Cochba, that baleful " son of a star," whose claims cochba. 
to the Messiahship had to be quenched in the blood 
of hundreds of thousands of his countrymen : destroy- 
ed whatever remains were left of the Jewish metropo- 
lis ; and built upon its site a Gentile colony under the 
name of iElia Capitolina, forbidding the Jews and 
every thing Jewish to enter its walls any more. 18 

From that time forth, the Jewish Christians, under Gentile 

7 ' succession, 

Marcus, a bishop of Gentile extraction, the sixteenth A - D - 135 - 
from S. James in order of descent, became a homo- 
geneous portion of the mass of Catholic believers ; 
and Jerusalem, or ^Elia, recovered something of its 
pristine glory, as one of the principal Apostolic Sees. 
Of those, who refused to conform to the new order 
of things, the greater part were absorbed in Gnostic 
or Ebionite sects. 

18 Sulpicius Severus, quoted and discussed by Mosheim : Coram. 
xxviii. 1. 



56 



HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. 



[BK. I. 



S. Peter's 
position. 



His use of 
the Keys. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

S. PETER S. MARK S. CLEMENT. 

S. Peter's labors are sufficiently well known to 
show the fulfilment of the promises made to him by 
our Lord, but beyond that point are matter of con- 
jecture only. Being the first to confess the Divinity 
of Christ, he became the first stone 1 in the spiritual 
foundation of the Church. He held the keys, and 
was not slow to use them, by which the door of the 
kingdom was opened to the three great divisions of 
the human race. To the Jews in Jerusalem, to 
the Samaritans in Samaria, and to the Gentiles in 
Ceesarea, these cities being the centres respectively 
of the three races in Palestine, he was foremost in 
giving the seal of sonship .and adoption. Finally, 
having resided for a while in Csesarea and Antioch, 



1 S. Matt. xvi. 11-19 ; Peter is 
Petros, not Petra: a distinction 
not to be overthrown by any sup- 
posed Aramaic original used by our 
Lord. Whatever word our Lord 
may have nsed, the Greek of the 
New Testament is the language 
of the Holy Ghost ; and the Holy 
Ghost came as the Interpreter of 
the words of our Lord. If the 
Holy Ghost, therefore, calls Si- 
mon Petros, and the Rock on 
which the Church was built Petra, 
we ought to adhere to the dis- 
tinction. While on this subject, 
I may remark, that the Rock 



seems to be the Scripture symbol 
of the Divinity, and the Stone, of 
the Humanity of our Lord. The 
Church, of course, was founded 
on both. The keys are by many 
regarded as synonymous with the 
power of binding and loosing. It 
seems more natural to apply the 
figure to the first admission to 
the Church ; especially as that 
admission was accompanied in 
Samaria and Jerusalem by two 
terrible examples of exclusion. 
This primary application, how- 
ever, does not preclude the other 
and more common sense. 



CH. Vm.] S. PETER — S. MARK — S. CLEMENT. 57 

and haying labored, perhaps, in the conntries men- 
tioned in his first Epistle, he closed his career in 
Rome in company with S. Paul. He was crucified, 
it is said, with his head downward. 

The account given by Eusebius of a supposed visit ^ is R ^j* s 
to Rome, just after the conversion of Cornelius, is 
liable to objection, not only from the silence of the 
Acts and of the Epistle to the Romans, but from the 
over close resemblance between this alleged visit 
and that which took place at a later period ; an 
encounter with Simon Magus being common to both 
occasions. Nothing is more natural in tradition 
than to make two events out of two accounts of one 
and the same event. 

His travels being much in the direction of S. Paul's ffi s 
— to Csesarea, Antioch, the countries mentioned 
in his first Epistle, possibly Corinth, possibly Baby- 
lon in Egypt, and more certainly Rome — lie seems, 
according to an understanding with that Apostle, to 
have addressed himself mainly to the Hebrews, or 
" strangers scattered abroad." 2 Hence, in establish- 
ing the Episcopate in Antioch and Rome, S. Paul 
and he are said to have acted in concert. In the 
former city Euodius and Ignatius were appointed Bishoprics 
the first Bishops, — Euodius over the Jewish, and Ig- 
natius over the Gentile converts : 3 the two races, it 

2 1 Pet. i. The Epistle is writ- though, the fact of more than one 
ten for Gentile Christians (ii. 10): Bishop appointed to a city may 
But the style of address shows, be as well or better explained by 
that S. Peter regarded them from that collegiate principle on which 
the Judaic point of view — as the Apostles so often acted. It 
sojourners, strangers scattered might be also, that in a troublous 
abroad, etc. period, when synods could not be 

3 Such is the conjecture of Ba- held, and Bishops could not as- 
ronius, following the assertion semble from different cities, it 
of the Apostolic Constitutions ; would be thought best to secure 

3* 



58 HISTORY OF THE CHUKCH. [BK. I. 

is supposed, remaining for a while distinct in their 
places and modes of worship. Afterwards, in that 
great phrensy of expiring Judaism which extended 
to all parts of the Koman world, Euodins was slain in 
an outbreak of the Heathen against the Jews ; and his 
separate charge, abandoning their peculiarities, be- 
came under Ignatius an homogeneous portion of the 
now united flock. Similar events may have taken 
place in Eome. It must be confessed, however, that 
the ultimate fusion of the Jew and Gentile Churches 
is one of the obscurest points in early Church 
history. 
His gift g. Peter's character, and there is solid reason to 

pastoral. ... . 

believe his " gift," or peculiar work, were eminently 
pastoral. 4 His natural impulsiveness, his proneness 
to precipitous extremes, and, above all, the affection- 
ateness of his disposition, made him, when disciplined 
by grace, the more capable of sympathizing largely 
with men of every sort, and of distinguishing com- 
plementary opposites from those really antagonistic 
and irreconcilable. In this respect his threefold 
denial may have been as useful to him as his three- 
fold confession. Having experienced that infirmity 
of " amazement" & to which the "lambs" are liable, 
he was the better able to have compassion for it. 
His Having needed strengthening himself, he was the 

and weak- more ready to " strengthen the brethren." It is re- 
markable, however, that the latest inspired record 
of this great Apostle exhibits him in his weakness, 

a sort of synodal action by hav- Apostles, that S. Paul calls our 

ing two, or three, or more Bish- Lord " the Apostle and High 

ops in each of the great centres. Priest of our Profession," but S. 

See book ii., chap. x. Peter entitles Him " the Shep- 

4 John, xxi. 15-1 7. It seems herd and Bishop of our souls." 

to me characteristic of the two 5 1 Pet. iii. 6. 



CH. Vin.] S. PETER — S. MARK — S. CLEMENT. 59 

rather than in his strength. When he first went to 
Antioch, 6 he showed his appreciation of the grace 
given to the Gentiles, and of their entire equality 
with the Jews, by freely eating with them ; but 
afterwards, yielding to the urgency of the Judaizing £ e g s p r ^ 
party, he withdrew from this position, and exposed 
himself thereby to the censure of S. Paul. Of the 
events of his later life even tradition says little. 
From his second Epistle we gather, that, like S. 
Paul, he was forewarned of the approach of death, 7 
and saw the fiery trials that were coining upon the 
Church. It is equally certain, that he did what in 
him lay to provide for all emergencies. That he 
was ever Bishop of Antioch and Eome, in the strict 
sense of the word, 8 is warranted by no reliable testi- 
mony of the early Church ; but that he and S. Paul 
appointed the first Bishops of those cities seems to 
have been generally admitted. 

S. Peter was a married man ; and his " company," His wife. 
as may be inferred from a passage of S. Paul, was 
graced by those genial influences of domestic life, 
which the Jews in travelling, were more accustomed 
than the Heathen to " lead about" with them. 9 His 
most intimate associates were first S. John, after- 
wards S. James of Jerusalem, S. Barnabas, and 
finally S. Paul. 



6 Gal. ii. 11. to reconcile this claim with facts, 
T 2 Pet. i. 14. shows his embarrassment at 
8 The claim that he was seven every step : Tom. i. part 2. 
years Bishop of Antioch, and B 1 Cor. ix. 5. Peter's wife, tra- 
twenty or twenty-five years Bish- dition says, was a worthy help- 
op of Rome, involves chronologi- meet. "When summoned " to go 
cal and other difficulties without home" by the path of martyrdom, 
number. See Barrow on the she obeyed the summons with 
Pope's Supremacy. Tillemont joy. Euseb. ili. 30. Clem. Alex. 
{Memoires, etc.), in his endeavor JSlromat. vii. 



60 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. I. 

s. Mark. S. Mark the Evangelist, his chosen " Son," or 
Disciple, he sent to Alexandria, where, after preach- 
ing the Gospel in various parts of Egypt, he es- 
tablished the " Evangelic See," ano} left Annianus 
Bishop. 

& ciem- g. Clement of Kome, left as Bishop of that See 
with Linns and Cletns, became sole Pastor after the 
death of these two, and is the author of the only un- 
inspired record now extant of the Church in the first 
century. 

It is a fraternal Epistle from the Church of Rome 
to that of Corinth, occasioned by a factious attempt 
in the latter city to depose certain Presbyters from 

the'cw- their office. Hence the letter is largely occupied 

inthians. w ^] 1 questions of Church order. The writer sees a 
law of harmony and proportion in all the works of 
God. Sun and moon, earth and stars, the tides of 
the sea, the seasons of the year, the shifting winds, 
the overflowing fountains, and all the innumerable 
tribes of living creatures, move freely, but harmoni- 
ously, in the order that God has foreordained and 

ah things unalterably established. The same principle must 

subject " x x 

to law. apply to God's spiritual kingdom. His worship is 
not to be left to fancy or caprice. His word is not 
to be divided by all men alike. The Chief Priest 
has his proper office ; the Priests theirs ; the Levites 
theirs ; and the Layman is called to the work of le- 
gitimate lay service. All are not Prefects ; all are 
not Chiliarchs; all are not Centurions. Each has 
his vocation, each his appointed place. It remains, 
therefore, for each to attend to his own business in 
that particular station to which it hath pleased God 
to call him. This, with many charitable exhorta- 
tions, is the sum of the Saint's counsel to the turbu- 



CH*IX.] S. JOHN. 61 

lent Corinthians ; a counsel so highly appreciated in 
those times, that the sedition was appeased, and the 
Epistle was for a long while read publicly in the 
Churches, with a respect hardly inferior to that paid 
to the Canon of inspiration. 

This admirable Letter, like the Pastoral Epistles ? f u e ^ e ° r ns 
of S. Paul, serves to mark that crisis in Church His- £™ ed> 
tory, when questions of order, naturally postponed 
in the first effusion of Pentecostal life, had to be 
considered and deliberately settled. The Church- 
man, the Bishop, the Divine, is now taking the 
place of the Evangelist or Apostle. The Tabernacle 
once reared by the first Preachers, it devolves upon 
their successors to drive the stakes and stretch the 
cords. "With Clement in Rome, John in Ephesus, 
Ignatius in Antioch, Symeon in Jerusalem, and An- 
nianus in Alexandria, to superintend the work, there 
is every assurance that it was done well and wisely ; 
so that God was the author of the order, as well as 
of the doctrine, which, on the lifting of the curtain 
of the second great Act of the Church's history, we 
find to be everywhere prevailing, and everywhere 
the same. 



CHAPTER IX. 

S. JOHN". 



S. John, the beloved disciple, differed from his & John . 

m ' *• ' the surviv- 

brethren in this respect, that his main work seems ° A r of „ th ,? 

- 1 - 7 Apostolic 

to have begun about the time that they were sum- Colle s e - 
moned to their rest. For his peculiar mission he 



62 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. I. 

had to tarry, as it were, until the Lord came. 1 His 
influence was reserved for the generation that came 
after the doom of the Holy City. 
Removes Soon after the martyrdom of S. Peter and S. Paul, 

to Asia. 

Proper, he removed to Asia Proper, a field in which the 
wheat was already mingled with the tares of per- 

itome. nicious speculations. He afterwards visited Pome, 
and in the persecution under Domitian, was banished 

Patmos. to the Isle of Patmos. On the accession of ISTerva, 
he returned to Asia, and, at the request of the 
Bishops of that Province, assumed the Episcopate of 

Ephesus. Ephesus, which then lay vacant. There he quietly 
awaited the time of his departure, confining his 
preaching, it is said, to the simple exhortation, 
" Little children, love one another !" Towards the 
end of his life he was so infirm, that he had to be 
carried into church. 2 

His char- Judging from the traditions of this period of his 

soifo'f life, John continued still to be a Son of Thunder, — 
the thunder not the less terrible, that it came from a 
cloudless sky. Less demonstrative than Peter, and 
with less sympathy, perhaps, for common-place pas- 
sions and infirmities, he loved the Divine "Word with 
an intense and contemplative devotion ; and " the 
brethren" he loved, as idealized in Him, as shielded 
by His luminous presence from all contact or ap- 
proach of the Evil One. To Him God was Light, 
without a shade of Darkness. There was no middle 
ground in his view, no shading, no perspective. His 
eagle eye knew no such thing as twilight. Lie loved 
the Truth, and hated lies. Half-truths, half-lies, 



1 S. John, xxi. 22. 23, 24, 31 ; v. 24, Clemens Alex- 

2 Euseb. Eccles. Hist. iii. 18, andr. Quis Dives Salvus? 42, 



acter 
Son c 
Thunder 



CH. IX.] S. JOHN. 63 

or half-love for either, had no place in his con- 
ceptions. 

Such a character is too pure and single, too inward suited to 
and upward-looking, for ordinary occasions. It needs ^crisis, 
a special crisis to draw it out from its luminous 
sphere. When the moral atmosphere becomes leth- 
argic and pestilential, so that a new and quickening 
power is imperatively demanded, then is the time for 
the Sons of Thunder to awake. At other times 
sheathed in imperturbable serenity, they know not 
themselves what spirit they are of, and are still less 
open to superficial observers. 



It is highly probable, that the early death of James, 



His 
brother 

the elder of the two brothers, was occasioned by some ll m e f rlJ 
lightning-burst of zeal thus specially awakened. Mar *y r - 
Herod had James summarily beheaded ; but Simon 
Peter, a more prominent, and ordinarily a more im- 
petuous leader, he was content to cast into prison. 
The Son of Thunder, it is likely, had in some way or 
other touched the tyrant to the quick. 

Of the younger son of Zebedee, two acts remain to Traditions, 
show, that the spirit which would call down fire from 
heaven upon the heads of the Samaritans, was rather 
chastened than extinguished by the power of Divine 
grace. On one occasion he fled with horror from a 
public bath, because the heretic Cerinthus happened cerinthus. 
to be there. ]STo house could stand, that harbored 
an enemy of the Truth ! At another time he had 
entrusted a youthful convert to the pastoral care of 
a certain Bishop not far from Ephesus. The youth Young 

Disciple* 

fell away, and became a leader of banditti. "When 
John heard of it, he smote his head, rent his clothes, 
and having vehemently rebuked the remissness of 
the Shepherd, went himself among the robbers in 



64 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. I. 

quest of the lost sheep. His yearning love was 
wonderfully rewarded. He brought back the youth 
a penitent, and restored him to the Church. 

™ce in a fl rSi- With love such as this, tempered by God's grace 

gnostic. an( j sheathed ordinarily in a serenity of character, 
childlike, affectionate, equable, and profound, S. 
John was the man of all others to cope with those 
" grievous wolves," the theosophic heresies of the 
last quarter of the century, whose approach S. Paul 
had so solemnly predicted to the Ephesian shep- 
herds. 8 He had the eagle eye to discern the spoiler 
from afar ; the sudden swoop of the eagle to strike 
him down. His intuitive quickness of perception, 
united as it was to a soaring imagination and a 
virgin heart, qualified him not only to bring out a 

christian true Christian gnosis face to face with the false 
gnosis 4 of the heretic, but to array it in a garb of 
majestic simplicity and beauty. The demonstration 
of this power was reserved for a time of peculiar peril 
to the Faith. At a period when Christianity was 
becoming an object of theoretic scrutiny, when a 
speculative and highly imaginative philosophy was 
displaying its gorgeous hues before the eyes of the 
refined and sensitive Greeks of Asia Minor, and 
when every lie found it necessary to assume a pro- 
foundly mystic and religious shape, then, and there, 
was the true sphere found of the Apostolic Divine 

His style. anc [ Prophet. His utterances, childlike, clear as 
crystal, but with much of that " terrible crystal" 
which in Ezekiel's vision overarches the canopy of 
heaven, were admirably adapted to such a state of 
things. 

8 Acts, xx. 29, 30. 

4 " Oppositions of science falsely so called." 1 Tim. vi. 20. 



CH. IX.] S. JOHN. 65 

In other respects, also, S. John merited his title as Apostie 
the Apostle of Love. For, as love is the bond of all 
perfectness, the complement of all virtues, and the 
fulfilling of all law, it would seem to have been the 
privilege of the beloved Disciple to give the last 
finish to the foundation work of his brethren ; and 
as Apostle, Prophet, Doctor, Evangelist, and Pastor, 
to supply whatever might be lacking in the organiz- 
ation, or whatever might be desirable for the strength 
and beauty, of the Church. 

His Gospel, written late in life, is the key-stone, as ™s 
it were, of evangelic history. His Epistles are emi- Epistles, 
nently an epitome, or summary, or rather a kind of flon. 
sublimated essence, of the Faith. His Revelation, in 
like manner, contains the substance of all prophecy : 
its gorgeous visions gathering like many-colored 
clouds around the sunset of inspiration, blending in 
one harmonious whole the glories of Isaiah, Ezekiel, 
and Daniel, and illumining the entire field of the 
Church's conflicts to the end of time. 

Considering the peculiarities of his character and import of 

• '• 1 «T • hlS latCT 

position, there is inherent probability m the story, nfe. 
that he set his seal, as it were, to the three Gospels 
of his predecessors, and perhaps to the whole Canon 
of inspiration. Living thirty years within the region 
to which most of the Epistles are addressed, he could 
hardly have been unacquainted with them. One of 
the four great Liturgies is ascribed to him, 5 at least in 

5 Palmer, Origines Liturgicce. " gift," or particular vocation, lay 
Polycrates (apud Euseb.) mentions in the quiet duties of the sanctu- 
thathe wore the " petalon of high- ary, rather than in the more stir- 
priest." The title, the Elder or ring life of a missionary Apostle. 
Presbyter, that S. John applies It was S. Paul's " gift" to lay the 
to himself in his second and third foundation ; it may have been 
Epistles, may indicate that his equally S. John's to build upon 



66 HISTORY OF THE CHUECH. [BK. I. 

its germ, or outline. His name is associated also with 
the Asiatic custom of observing the Jewish Pascha. 
Without laying undue stress upon particulars of this 
kind, there was doubtless a special Providence in his 
long and peaceful residence among the Churches 
generation °^ Asia. The second generation is always a 
critical, critical period in the history of religious bodies. 
The first love passing away, there follows a season of 
lukewarmness, or of alternate heats and chills. Her- 
esies begin to show themselves, schisms are engen- 
dered. The most trivial differences of opinion fester 
and gangrene into causes of separation. That the 
Church, so widely diffused, so heterogeneous in 
materials, moving in such a chaos of opinions and 
amid such scenes of religious and civil strife as the 
world at that time presented, should not only have 
passed this critical stage of her existence without 
serious loss, but should have presented at its close a 
unity of spectacle of unity and uniformity which has been 
church, the wonder of all ages, must be ascribed in the first 
place to an overruling wisdom unfathomable to man ; 
and in the second place to S. John, as the chief of 
the chosen instruments employed by that wisdom. 
" Little children, love one another," was not with 
him a mere word of exhortation. It was the symbol 
of a great power of discipline and order. It was the 
dove-like spirit of a holy conservatism. For thirty 

foundations already laid. The not written by John the Apostle, 

term " Presbyter," however, as but by some presbyter of that 

used by S. John, seems to stand name. He seems not to notice 

for high position of any kind the force of the definite article. 

(" the four and twenty Elders," It is not a Presbyter or Elder, 

for example), and not for Presby- but the Elder; evidently pointing 

ters in the restricted sense. JNe- to some one person, to whom 

ander concludes from its use in alone that designation could ap- 

the two Epistles, that they were ply. 



CH. X.] HOLY WOMEN. 67 

years in the person of S. John, and for nearly a 
hundred years in him and his noble contemporaries 
who overlived him, the same spirit pervaded the 5^ e s f a ally 
Province of Asia ; and from that living and loving 
centre was communicated to the Churches in all 
quarters of the world. 

The persecution under Dornitian, commonly reck- S ^°J^ 
oned as the second of the general persecutions, in [£™ e ° u - 
which S. John was banished to Patmos, having es- 95 - ' 
caped unhurt, as the story goes, from a caldron of 
boiling oil, 8 was general rather in the wide alarm it 
caused, than either in its severity or duration. It 
seems, in fact, to have been nothing more than one 
of the tyrant's innumerable caprices. His jealousy 
of every thing noble and illustrious had been excited 
by a rumor of certain descendants of King David 
being yet alive in some part of Judsea. When he 
found, however, that these were simple and poor 
men, his anger against the Christians ceased, or was 
diverted into other channels. 



CHAPTEE X. 

HOLY WOMEN. 

The high position held by woman, both in the Hoiy 
Gospels and in the Acts, would render the story of 
this century incomplete, if at least some allusion t^y'. 

6 This story is mentioned by from the Holy One," might sug- 

Tertullian. Whatever the testi- gest just such a punishment to 

mony may he worth, one can the cruel and frivolous mind of a 

readily imagine, that S. John's tyrant like Dornitian. Tertull. de 

peculiar phrase, " an unction Prcescript. Hcereticor. 36. 



women in 
tradition 
and his- 



68 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. I. 

were not made to those who may be called the first 
heroines of Christianity. With regard to them, 
however, History has proved less mindful 'than In- 
spiration and Tradition. Inspiration has preserved 
their names. Tradition has fondly embellished them 
with beautiful though inconsistent traits. To His- 
tory nothing is left but the ungrateful task of con- 
fessing how little is known about them ; little, at all 
events, beyond the pregnant hints given in the New 
Testament. 
The S. Mary, the Mother of our Lord, was committed 

Mother of «/ ' ' 

our Lord. \)j Him to the care of the beloved Disciple ; and 
with him she remained, probably, till summoned to 
her rest. We see her first as a devout and holy Vir- 
gin, receiving in simple but thoughtful faith the 
wonderful message of the Angel ; then as a matron, 
and mother, sympathizing readily with the house- 
hold cares of her friends, 1 and anxious for her Son, 
on one occasion with sorrowful solicitude, 2 and on 
another with a shade of natural misgiving; 3 then, 
as one of the few who stood beside His Cross ; and, 
lastly, as a widow, without children or others near 
of kin to whom she could be confided, left therefore 
to the care of the virgin Disciple, 4 and engaged with 
the other women, and with the Apostles and Disci- 
ples, in the daily worship of the Church. "Within 

1 S. John, ii. 3. learn from Hegesippus in Euse- 

2 S. Luke, ii. 48. bius) were still alive, as eminent 

3 S. Mark, iii. 21, 31. Christian men, and landowners, 

4 Her being- thus left to John is though not rich, towards the end 
fatal to the weak argument made of the century. All of these, lead- 
by Neander and some others, in ing a quiet and stationary life 
favor of the theory that James of among their own kin, were in a 
Jerusalem was her son. James better position to take care of her, 
survived, till just before the Ju- had she been their mother, than 
daic war ; his brothers (as we John could have been. 



CH. X.] HOLY WOMEN. 69 

these limits her history is clear, and her character 
stands ont in singular perfection of womanly dignity 
and beauty. But all before, and all after, Inspiration 
has left in doubt. With a sacred reserve in which Reserve 

of Scrip- 
One can hardly fail to see a lesson, only that short ture. 

segment of her existence is made visible to posterity, 
in which she vouches, as it were, for the real and 
perfect Humanity of her blessed and only Son. 

Tradition, or, as seems more probable, heretical Jjj^jj. 
invention, 5 endeavored in later times to fill this tions - 
blank. Joachim and Anna, a blameless pair, were 
both well stricken in years, and unblest with off- 
spring ; for which, however, they continued to pray 
without ceasing. The latter, on one occasion, in the 
fervor of her petitions, dared to go within the Holy 
of Holies, which the high-priest alone is allowed to 
enter. There her prayer was granted ; and an An- 
gel, at the same moment, announced the good news 
to Joachim, then far away in the desert. To this 
some heretics added, that the birth of the Virgin 
was as immaculate and miraculous as her conception 
had been. It was more generally believed, on simi- 
lar authority, that she lived secluded in the Temple 
from her third to her fourteenth year, and devoted 
herself to a life of voluntary virginity. In the same 
way, while some have supposed, on the authority of 
a passage of doubtful meaning in the Acts of the 
Ecumenical Council of Ephesus, that she died and 
was buried in that city, others have preferred the 
later legend, that she came to her end in Jerusalem, 
and after three, or, as some will have it, forty days, 

6 These stories were of Gnostic secret tradition unknown to the 
or Ebionite invention ; many of Catholic Church, 
the early sects pretending to a 



70 HISTOKY OF THE CHURCH. [BK. I. 

rose from the dead, and was assumed, soul and body, 
into heaven. But all these notions, and innumerable 
others of the same kind, are without the least show 
of historic foundation. They first saw the light in 
times long after the age of the Apostles ; and it is 
universally acknowledged, 6 that the writings in 
which they first appear, are " utterly apocryphal 
and full of fables." 

wlmen 017 ^ ne same * s to be said of the stories concerning 
Mary, the wife of Cleophas, and other faithful 
women who ministered to our Lord. Of the Pro- 
phetesses, Deaconesses, Widows, and other devout 
handmaidens of the Lord mentioned in the Acts and 
the Epistles, the traditions are equally vague and 
unsatisfactory. If the legends connected with them 
have any value, it is merely that, as a dark and con- 
fused back-ground, they bring into clearer light the 
dignity and simplicity of the Gospel Narratives. 

ss. Thecia To the honored names recorded by Inspiration, 

and Dom- « *■ ' 

itiiia. Tradition has added a few, such as that of S. Thecia, 
the first female martyr; and that of Domitilla, a 
niece of the Emperor Domitian, and wife of Flavius 
Clemens his cousin, who, with a great number of 
others, was put to death for Atheism and Jewish 
manners; in other words, for the profession of 
Christianity. 7 Domitilla suffered exile for the Faith. 
S. Thecia, a maiden of Iconium, converted by S. 
Paul on his first visit to that region, devoted herself, 



c See Tillemont, Baronius, the the earliest witnesses to those 

Bollandists, et at. The caution wonders, is most remarkable, 

with which Roman Catholic wri- Tillemont's notes are particularly 

ters endeavor to sustain the credit instructive. Memoires pour Servir 

of the tissue of wonders connect- a VHist. JEcclea., torn. i. 

ed with the name of S. Mary, 7 See Gibbon's Decline and 

while demolishing the credit of Fall, etc., vol. i. ch. xvi 



CH. XI.] CHURCH GOVERNMENT. 71 

it is said, to a life of virginity ; left a luxurious 
home, breaking off her engagement to a noble 
youth ; accompanied S. Paul in his travels ; per- 
formed many wonders ; and, after a miraculous de- 
liverance from the beasts of the Roman Amphi- 
theatre-, seems to have died in peace. Her name, 
widely celebrated in the early Church, heads- a long virgins, 
list of highly intellectual as well as holy women, to 
whom Christianity and virginity were pledges of a 
freedom, 6 which in heathen society was more or less 
denied them. Her acts, however, first written by a 
Presbyter of Asia Minor, whom S. John deposed on 
account of the many falsehoods contained in his 
book, 9 are manifestly entitled to little or no credit. 



CHAPTER XI. 



CHURCH GOVERNMENT. 



That all powers necessary for the establishment aii powers 

-i -i n i /-n i given to 

and subsequent government oi the Church were Apostles 
committed in the first place to the Eleven, and 
afterwards to those, who either by election or by an 
immediate divine call were added to their number, 
there can be no reasonable question. These all were 
Apostles, or Legates of Him, who is " the Apostle 
of our profession," the One sent forth by the Father, 

B The preference given to vir- parents. It is remarkable how 

ginity in the early Church tended many of the female martyrs were 

to elevate woman in the social virgins, who had refused to marry 

scale. She could marry, or not, heathen husbands, to whom they 

of her own free choice. She was had been thus betrothed. 

no longer an article to be dis- 9 Tert. de Bap. 17: Hier. de 

posed of, sometimes in infancy Ver. ill. 7. It is S. Jerome only 

or childhood, by guardians or who mentions the name of S. John. 



ing order. 



72 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. I. 

to be Prophet, Priest, and King. But the mission 
ApSe, -^- e na ^ received from the Father, He gave in its 
pr"iest Hish " f umess "to them. The Apostles, therefore, were the 
ecumenical, catholic, perpetnal Ministry. Collect- 
ively, they attended to matters of general concern- 
ment : individually, each had a charge, or field, the 
limits -of which would be determined by mutual 
consent, 1 or on general principles of equity and con- 
venience. In their relations to one another, they 
Brothers, were " brothers," colleagues, peers. Thev called no 

colleagues, 7 i a • 

peers. man "father on earth. According to the type of 
the old Theocracy, a " kingdom" was given to them ; 
but the Head was to be invisible till the time of the 
final " appearing and kingdom" of Jesus Christ. 

The abid- Such was the ministry, as called, and trained, and 
commissioned by our Lord himself. That it was to 
be the abiding Order, is seen, not only in the promise 
of perpetuity contained in the words, " Lo, I am with 
you always, even to the end of the world," but also 
in the fact, that the term " Apostolic" has continued 
in all times and places, to be one of the four 
" notes," or definitions, of the " One, Holy, Catholic, 
and Apostolic Church." 2 

1 Gal. ii. 9; Rom. xv. 16. the argument for Episcopacy, 

2 Among modern German and so neutralizes its force. Ne- 
writers on this subject, Moskeim avder denies altogether the exist- 
aeknowledges the early rise of ence of a clems, or clerical order 
Episcopacy, and is almost dis- in the Apostolic Church. Dr. 
posed to grant that James was Hase starts from the point, that 
Bishop of Jerusalem. He con- " the twelve apostles at first re- 
founds Bishops, however, with garded themselves as a perfected 
Diocesans or See-bishops ; forget- or exclusive college for the estab- 
ting that Bishops at large, mis- lishment of Christianity in the 
sionary Bishops, etc., have ex- world ;" but, in refeiTing to the 
isted in all ages. Dr. Schaff is establishment they made in Jeru- 
entangled in the same error, and salem, omits all mention of James, 
while he professes to give the ar- In this way, he staves off Epis- 
guments pro and con, he misstates copacy till the times of S. Igna- 



CH. XI.] 



CHURCH GOVERNMENT. 



73 



By calling the seventy to the same ministry with Apostolic 
the twelve, though in a secondary capacity, onr Feiiows. 
Lord established a seminary, as it were, for ,a second 
and larger growth of Apostolic leaders. 3 The name 
Disciples given to them implies, that, while fulfill- 
ing a temporary mission as " prophets of the king- 
dom," they were in training and expectation of a 
more enduring office. Accordingly, from their ranks 
Matthias was elected to the vacant bishopric of 



tius, and accounts for it (as some 
rationalists account for the exist- 
ence of the world) " by the con- 
current power of circumstances." 
Gieseler very fully grants the 
early establishment of Episcopacy 
in Jerusalem, in the person of 
James. Thiersch (the Irvingite) 
treats the subject as many Angli- 
cans have done, except that on a 
very fine point (the position of 
S. John relatively to the seven 
angels) he builds up a theory of 
an Episcopacy of three orders, 
viz., Apostles, Angels, Bishops. 
JRothe makes Episcopacy to have 
been established by the Apostles 
in council, at the election of 
Symeon (Euseb. iii. 11). Other 
Germans have adopted different 
shades or mixtures of these va- 
rious views. Among Anglican 
writers, I may mention Bilson's 
Perpetual Divine Government as 
a work less read than it deserves: 
also, among American authors, 
Onderdonk on Episcopacy, Mines' 
Presbyterian, etc., Wilson, Church 
Identified In the following chap- 
ter I have given (perhaps) more 
weight to the collegiate principle 
than is commonly conceded to 
it. 

3 Dr. Schaff sees in the calling 
of the Seventy a reference to the 
Gentiles; but arbitrarily dis- 



tinguishes the secondary Apos- 
tles as Evangelists. Of the eight, 
whom he so designates, not one 
is so called in the New Testa- 
ment; while the term apostles 
(translated " messengers," Phil. ii. 
25 ; 2 Cor. viii. 23,) of the Churches 
is applied to many of S. Paul's 
companions. Timothy, in one 
place (2 Tim. iv. 5), is exhorted 
to do the work of an Evangelist. 
But this does not prove him to 
have been an Evangelist only, 
any more than Acts, xiii. 1, would 
prove Paul or Barnabas to have 
teen " prophets" only. Dr. 
Schaff mentions Mark and Luke 
among his Evangelists — because, 
I suppose, they are commonly so 
called. But, on the same princi- 
ple, he might have included Mat- 
thew and John. The truth is, 
the term Evangelist means simply 
one who had an extraordinary 
" gift" for preaching the Gospel, 
and in that sense S. Paid was the 
chief of Evangelists — but none 
the less, however, an Apostle in 
the full sense of the word. I may 
here remark, that in the 13th 
canon of Neo-Cassarea (a. d. 315) / 
the Village Bishops are said to 
be " in imitation of the LXX," 
and therefore " fellow-officers in 
the same service" with the City 
Bishops. 



74 HISTORY OF THE CHUECH. [bk. I. 

Judas. Barnabas, also, was probably one of these. 
So, likewise, S. Lnke, and many others afterwards 
called Apostles. In imitation of this system of a 
secondary Apostolate, we find in after times, that 
each of the chief Apostles was accompanied in his 
labors by a chosen company of sons, disciples, 
brothers, colleagues, yoke-fellows, sometimes called 
Apostles or Messengers of the Churches, who held to 
their principals some such relation as Joshua to 
Moses, as Elisha to Elijah, as the sons of the prophets 
to the prophets, or as the twelve more recently had 
held to our Lord Himself. Being endowed with 
special gifts, — " apostles, prophets, evangelists, pas- 
tors, teachers," — being designated in some cases by 
"prophecies going before," being employed in 'the 
larger fields of labor as Apostles of the Churches, 
being personally acquainted, moreover, with the 
Apostles' " doctrine, purpose, and manner of life," 
they were in some sense their disciples, or sons, but 
in another sense their aids, or fellow-laborers. Thus, 
Timothy was more than once clothed with the full 
Second authority of S. Paul. His name, like that of Titus, 
the Apot Sosthenes, and Silvanus, 4 is associated with S. Paul's 
in the superscription of Epistles. All that they 
lacked, during the lifetime of S. Paul, was a field of 
primary or separate jurisdiction. But, in serving 
thus in a secondary position, they simply followed 
the example of their leader. For, it is to be observed, 
that during his ministry in Antioch, Saul himself 
was reckoned last among a company of " prophets," 
of which Barnabas was first. So, in the first mis- 
sionary journey he was second to Barnabas. It was 

4 1 Cor. i. 1 ; 2 Cor. i. 1 ; Phil. i. 1 ; Col. i. 1 ; 1 and 2 Thessal. i. 1. 



CH. XI.] CHURCH GOVERNMENT. 75 

twelve years, or more, after his first calling by our 
Lord that he assumed a primary position as an 
Apostolic leader. 5 

Such, then, was the catholic, or ecumenical minis- . one coi- 

lege at 

try of the Church : at first, one Apostolic company first, then 
of Twelve, resident in Jerusalem ; afterwards, when 
the door to the Gentiles had been opened, numerous 
companies or colleges of the same kind, acting dis- 
persedly but harmoniously in all quarters of the 
world. The collegiate principle, which is manifest in 
all this, was never abandoned in the Church. Even 
when each great city came to have its own bishop, the 
principle was retained in that ancient canon which The P rin- 
required two or three prelates to concur in episcopal Clp e 
ordinations ; and still more fully, in the custom of 
annual or semi-annual Synods. TVTierever truth was 
to be proclaimed with fulness of authority, as against 
some heresy, for example, the " great company of 
preachers" was obliged to come together. 

The sojourn of the Twelve in Jerusalem, the only jgJJJ^. 
Church founded by the original Apostolic College, %**££*> 
enabled them to establish in that great centre the £jj£ » 
first pattern and example of a local Church. 6 There J? 8 * 01 "' or 
were Presbyters, or Elders, who, being sometimes 
called Bishops, or Overseers, may, for the sake of 
clearness, be distinguished as Presbyter-Bishops. To 
them were added the Seven, afterwards called Dea- 
cons. Finally, the work of organizing the mother 

5 Acts, xiii. 1, 2 ; xiv. 14 ; xv. reside, at the head of the Church, 
12, 25. in equal esteem with the Apos- 

6 "The new Churches out of Pal- ties. . . quite in the relation of a 
estine formed themselves after the later bishop, but without the ap- 
pattern of the mother Church in pellatlon." Gies. Ecc. Hist, § 30. 
Jerusalem .... James . . . stood in (Smith's Am. Ed.) 
Jerusalem, where he continued to 



76 HISTORY OF THE CHUECH. [BK. I. 

Church at Jerusalem being duly accomplished, James, 
an Apostle, and probably one of the original Twelve, 
was put in special charge of that important See ; and 
the other Apostles, leaving its government to him, 
separated, and departed on their respective missions. 
i ai £ s e tie an From that time forth, James stands before us in a 
Bishop, twofold relation. He is an Apostle, reckoned first 
among the three main " pillars" of the universal 
Church. He is a local Chief-pastor, Bishop, or 
Overseer. We may call him, therefore, by way of 
distinction, the Apostle-Bishop of the See of Jeru- 
salem. 7 
The same Now, what the Apostles did collectively with re- 

system - 1 - " 

elsewhere, gard to the mother See, they afterwards did several- 
ly, though from the difference of circumstances some- 
what more slowly, with regard to other Churches in 
the limits of their respective missions. Wherever a 
Church was founded, Presbyters or Bishops 8 were 
ordained. To them a certain oversight, subject^o 
that of the Apostolic founder, was duly committed. 
They could preach, teach, minister in things sacred, 
and act in matters of discipline and doctrine as a 
kind of local council, senate, or sanhedrim. Dea- 
cons were in like manner appointed, with a special 
view to the administration of the charities of the 
Church. The proper sphere of woman, as a help- 
meet for man, in the higher as well as lower cares of 

Deacon- life was acknowledged in the assignment of certain 

esses. ? © o 

widows, charitable offices to Deaconesses and Widows, 9 the 

7 Gal. i. 19 ; ii. 12 ; Acts, xii. ics for mating a distinction. 

17; xv. 13; xxi. 18. Those who make the distinction 

b I assume the identity of mean- can put the origin of city Sees 
ing of these two names in the and resident Bishops a little ear- 
New Testament, though there is lier than it is put in this chapter, 
high authority among sound crit- 9 1 Tim. v. 9 ; Tit. ii. 3 ; Phil. iv. 3. 



CH. XI.] CHUKCH GOVERNMENT. 77 

same, perhaps, that are sometimes called elder wo- Eider 
men, or Presbyteresses. The Churches, thus organ- 
ized by each particular Apostle, continued to be the 
obj ects of his paternal care ; were visited by him, or 
by some one of his company, at certain intervals ; 
and, on the natural and equitable principle of each 
limiting his supervision to the line of his own labors, 
constituted his field or jurisdiction. 10 Thus S. Paul 
was Apostle-Bishop of Ephesus, Corinth, and many 
other places. The assignment of one resident head 
to each cjfy Church was naturally reserved, until the 
number of Christians in each place, and the number 
of persons duly qualified and trained as " Apostles 
of Churches," 11 rendered such an arrangement de- 
sirable and practicable. 

This simple order, by which the government of chamsms, 

*■ > J ° or Gifts. 

each local Church was so admirably knit to that of 
the Church at large, was. every where quickened, as 
it were, by the charismata, largesses,' or special 
"gifts," which followed the triumphant Ascension 
of our Lord to the Eight Hand of the Majesty on 
High. Such " gifts" were needed as a " sign." In 
the lack of a sufficient number of persons duly edu- 
cated for the office, they fitted a great mass of 
believers for some useful part in " the work of the 
Ministry," and were among the chief instruments of 
the supernatural growth of the Church. 

Among these, the " gift" to be Apostles naturally Their 
held the first place. Close akin to this were the 
special endowments, which distinguished the fit per- 
sons for Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors, Teachers. 
Those who exhibited signs of the possession of these 

10 1 Cor. iv. 14-21; 2 Cor. x. 15, 16. " 2 Cor. viii. 23. 



78 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [be. I. 

higher gifts seem generally to have been enrolled in 
the companies of the Apostles. Last of all were a 
crowd of inferior talents, miracles, healings, helps, 
governments, diversities of tongues, and the like, 
which continued so short a time, that the very 
meaning of the names is only matter of conjecture. 

purpose. ^ ms wonderful profusion of extraordinary gifts for 
the Ministry is no essential part of the Ministry itself. 
It was simply a gracious provision for a single and 
peculiar crisis. It belonged to the sowing, or plant- 
ing season. It was that flowering, or blo^oming of 
the Tree of Life, which partly anticipated, and partly 
developed the fruits of ordinary intellectual and 
spiritual culture. Like the parallel phenomenon of 
the Old Testament 12 — the outbreak, namely, of the 
spirit of prophecy in the Camp, while the order of 

Type. the Tabernacle was being established — it opened the 
way, and gave a Divine sanction, or sign, to the 
necessary division and distribution of ministerial 
functions. 13 As S. Paul declares: The gifts were 
given, " in order to fit believers for ministerial 
work" — to fit them "for the edification," or build- 
^ ing up " of the Body of Christ." 14 When this 
miraculous fitting of men for the Ministry had been 

12 Numbers, xi. 24-30. nature, viz., to be Apostles, Pro- 

13 If any notions of parity ex- phets, etc., etc. ; (3) their object, 
isted among the early Christians, viz., rrgbc KaTaoriGfibv — "for fit- 
nothing could more effectually ting," adapting, perfecting — "the 
have rebuked such notions, and saints," eic — " into ministerial 
prepared men's minds for a sys- work," etc.; (4) their duration, 
tern of subordinated grades in viz., till the Church, having 
the Ministry, than the measure in passed its infant state, arrives 
which the gifts were given. See at the well-compacted propor- 
Rom. xii. 3. tions of a mature and settled 

14 Ephesians,iv. 12-16; in which manhood, i. e., till it should be 
passage S. Paul declares (1) the strong enough to be left to the 
occasion, of these gifts, viz., the laws of ordinary and historic 
Ascension in triumph; (2) their growth. 



CH. XI.] CHURCH GOVERNMENT. 79 

sufficiently accomplished; when, according to what 
seems to be the drift of the lively mixed metaphors 
of the Apostle, the Church had weathered the com- 
paratively unsettled, and critical time of its infancy, 
and was hardening into the definite proportions of 
maturer manhood ; when, in short, its organic con- 
nection with Christ, the Head, had been compacted 
by the development of all the joints and bands of a 
harmonious system of order : then, prophecies began 
to fail ; then, tongues began to cease ; then, miracu- 
lous knowledge vanished away ; then, the gifts, in 
short, and the beautiful and marvellous ministration 
of gifts, were quietly withdrawn from the sphere of 
human experience; and ordinary gifts, or talents, 
took their place. 

And this is confirmed by observing the difference Difference 

" ° between 

made by our Lord between that preparatory and temporary 

7 .. . 1 m -i t a per " 

extraordinary comrmssion given to the Twelve and manent 

-II r>i i mission. 

the Seventy when they were sent forth two by two as 
Prophets of the Kingdom, and that perpetual charge 
laid upon the Twelve when they were sent forth with 
full powers to preach the Gospel. In the former com- 
mission He says : " Preach the Kingdom of Heaven 
at hand, heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise 
the dead, cast out devils : freely ye have received, 
freely give." The power to do wonders is an es- 
sential part of their mission. But in the latter com- 
mission He says : " Go ye out into all the world, 
preach the Gospel to every creature, baptize, teach 
all things that I have commanded ; and lo ! I am 
with you always, even to the end of the world." Eo 
extraordinary power is embodied in their commission. 
For, though miraculous gifts are afterwards alluded 
to, it is not in connection with the Ministry, but with 



80 HISTORY OF THE CHUECH. [BK. I. 

the Church in general. " These signs shall follow 
them that believe." From all which it is evident 
that while the gifts fitted men to be able Ministers 
of God, and sometimes designated the persons who 
should be admitted into the Ministry, they were no 
essential feature of the Ministry itself. 
power jjj the exercise of their office as chief rulers of the 

COMMUNI- 
CATED. Church, the Apostles did not hesitate to assert their 

authority when necessary, but at the same time 
avoided all appearance of despotic or monocratic 
rule. They communicated to the Presbyters every 
priestly power 16 of the ministry, and a share of every 
governing or kingly power. The particular function 
which they reserved absolutely to themselves was 
that of ordination ; and even in this the Presbyters 
took part, when the person ordained was to be ad- 
mitted into their own order. The " laying on of 
hands" for confirmation seems also to have been re- 
served to the highest order, at least during the 
Relation Apostolic age. 16 In accordance with this fraternal 
orders communication of ministerial powers, the Presbyters, 
another, and Brethren generally, were taken into council 
with the Apostles, even in matters which the latter 
were perfectly competent to determine by them- 
selves. In the same spirit S. Peter, in addressing 
the Presbyters, could speak of himself as their sym- 
preshyteros, fellow-presbyter; the powers of the 
ministry being, in fact, so distributed, that no name 
can be given to any one order, which is not in some 
sense applicable to the others also. The earliest 
image, therefore, of the relation of the Presbytery of 

1IS It is in priestly power, sacerdotio, that S. Jerome affirms the 
equality of Presbyters, Bishops, and Apostles : Ep. ad Evangdum. 
1U Bingham's Antiquities, B. ii. ch. xlx. 



CH. XI.] CHUECH GOVERNMENT. 81 

each local Church to the Chief Pastor, was that 
which represented the Bishop as in the place of 
Christ, 17 and the Presbyters as in the place of His 
"friends" and "brethren," the Twelve: an idea 
beautifully carried out in the most primitive arrange- 
ment of Churches ; namely, that of thirteen thrones, 
the middle one of which was occupied by the 
Bishop, the others by the Presbyters. The Deacons, 
in like manner, were represented as " angels and 
prophets," 18 bearing the diaconia of Jesus Christ: 
to wit, that out-going ministry, which our Lord ex- 
ercised when He* went about as a prophet, doing 
good. The three orders, in short, all participated in 
the threefold ministry ; the main difference being, 
that in the first order the kingly idea was most pro- 
minent, in the second the priestly, and in the third 
the prophetic. 

The People, also, were encouraged to take an lay ih- 

*- nn , FLUENCE. 

active interest in Church affairs. The essential 

17 S. Ignatius (ad Marines. 6,) that is subject to the Bishop, 

represents the three orders re- Presbyters, and Deacons — God's 

Bpectively as in the place of God, stewards, assessors, and minis- 

of the Apostles, of Jesus Christ, ters." See Bingham, ii. xix. 6-8 ; 

The context, however, seems to ii. xx. 18. 

show that by the first of these 18 So called in Apostol. Consti- 
expressions he means Christ as tut. ii. 30. I may observe, in 
the Divine Head ; and by the passing, that Deacons in modern 
third, Christ in His earthly min- times being young men with little 
istry. It has been well observed practical experience, and their 
by Pearson, Bingham, and others, office being regarded as a mere 
that S. Ignatius exalts the Pres- stepping-stone to a higher order, 
byters as earnestly as he does we have but a shadow of that di- 
the Bishop. The same may be aconate which was held by such 
said of his way of speaking of men as Stephen, Philip, Lauren- 
that order, " the dearest" to him, tius, Athanasius, and others, in 
the Deacons. The idea of co-or- ancient times. The custom of 
dination was more prominent to having only seven Deacons to a 
his mind than that of subordina- city, however large, (Canon 14, 
tion — though the latter was not Neo-Csesarea,) helped to give dig- 
lost sight of. " My life for him nity to the diaconal office. 
4* 



82 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. I. 

kingly priesthood of the mass of believers was as 
carefully inculcated upon the Christian, as it had 
previously been upon the Israelite Church. 19 The 
doctrine was carried out, moreover, into discipline 
and worship. As already mentioned, the Brethren 
were present at Apostolic councils ; and decrees 
went forth in their name, as well as in that of the 
Apostles and Elders. In the choice of the seven 
Deacons, and possibly in that of Matthias, the pre- 
Eiection cedent of election was established; so that the 
cievgy. Church no sooner became settled, than popular 
suffrage concurred with ordination in the appoint- 
ment of Bishops and other Church officers. In con- 
tributing to the common cause the brethren were 
left free to tax themselves ; in all acts of common 
• worship they had an important part assigned them ; 20 
and even in the administration of discipline, that 
eminently Apostolic office of binding and loosing, 
their cooperation was earnestly desired and thank- 
fully acknowledged. 21 
[Jj5 ,J. But in proportion as power thus descended and 
copate. became distributed, as it were, among all the mem- 
bers of the Body of Christ, there was the greater 
need that the Bishopric, 22 that is, the supreme over- 
sight and superintendence, should be exerted in a 
way to give it an effectual and decisive weight. 

19 1 Pet. ii. 5 ; Exod. xix. 6. 21 In this paragraph I refer 

20 The Liturgies, as is well chiefly to Acts, i. 26 ; vi. 5 ; xv. 
known, abound with such mutual 23; 1 Cor. xiv. 16; 2 Cor. ix. 
benedictions, etc., as " The Lord be 6-7; 1 Cor. v. 3-5; 2 Cor. ii. 
with you: And with thy Spirit." 5-10: passages which are con- 
For this reason, among many firmed in the interpretation I 
others, a Liturgy " understanded have given them by the uniform 
of the people" is highly impor- practice of the Church in the 
tant. Where the laity are deprived second and third centuries, 
oftheirjust part in public worship, M Acts, i. 20. See Chapin's 
they lose with it many other rights. View. . . of the Prion. Qh. ch. xv. 



CH. XI.] CHURCH GOVERNMENT. 83 

The Apostles exercised it in a way that showed J™"^* 
their sense of its importance. They fixed their resi- cised - 
dence, as far as possible, in the great world-centres. 
Thus, from the central point of Ephesus, S. Paul, for 
three years, supervised the Church work going on 
throughout the whole Province of Asia. They made 
regular visitations, as frequent and as long as cir- 
cumstances would permit, to the several Churches 
of their planting. In such visitations, the Presbyter- 
bishops were assembled, exhorted, admonished ; dis- 
cipline was administered when need so required ; 
ministers were ordained, faith confirmed, and gifts. 
bestowed by the laying on of hands. Questions of 
order, too hard for the local authorities, were then 
definitely settled. In this way, unity and uniformity 
were sufficiently secured. What Apostles ordained 
in one place, they had power and opportunity, if 
they deemed it advisable, to ordain in all. 23 

And when, from the continuous enlargement of Legates 

o f the 

their respective fields of labor, the Apostles saw less Apostles. 
than was desirable of the Churches under their 
charge, they exercised their oversight by written 
Epistles, or by sending one or other of theft Col- 
leagues of Companions, as Angels, Messengers, or 
Apostles for the nonce. Persons thus sent were 
clothed with full authority, and it was required that 
^hey should be received and treated as the elder 
Apostles themselves. 24 

Finally, towards the end of their career, when the their suo- 

All 1 1 • r» i • n CESSORS. 

• elder Apostles knew that the time oi their departure 
was at hand, they in no case left their peculiar powers 

23 Acts, xv. 36 ; xiv. 21-23 ; 24 Acts, xix. 22 ; 2 Cor. xii. 18 ; 
xviii. 23 ; xx. 17-35 ; 2 Cor. xiii. 2 ; viii. 23 ; 1 Cor. xvi. 1 0. 
1 Cor. xi. 34 ; xvi. 1, 2. 



84 



HISTOEY OF THE CHURCH. 



[bk. I. 



Powers 
given 
to them. 



to the Presbyter-bishops, or to the local congrega- 
tions ; 25 but, according to the uniform testimony of 
the early Church, assigned Timothy to Ephesus, 
though there was in that city a numerous band of 
Presbyter-bishops ; Titus to Crete ; Linus, Cletus, 
and Clemens to Rome ; Symeon to Jerusalem, after 
the death of James ; Euodius and Ignatius to Anti- 
och ; Polycarp to Smyrna ; Annianus to Alexandria ; 
and others of their companions to other places. 
They gave to these, moreover, all the supervisory 
powers of the Apostolic office. As we learn from 
the Epistles to Timothy and Titus, and from the 
Book of Revelation, they were to see to the selection 
of fit men for Presbyter-bishops and Deacons ; to 
ordain such as were approved; to try -such as were 
accused ; to rebuke, exhort, admonish, with all au- 
thority ; to expose the pretentions of false apostles ; 
to exercise, in short, the same oversight and rule 
which the first generation of Church rulers had ex- 
ercised before them. 



25 S. Jerome's declaration, in 
the Ejustle ad Evangelvm (and 
in Comment on Tit. i. 7), that 
"after contentions arose, one say- 
ing, I am of Paul, another, I of 
Apollos, etc., it vox decreed th rough 
the whole world, that one of the 
Presbyters should be elected and 
placed over the others, and to 
him the whole care of the Church 
should pertain, that the seeds of 
schism might be removed," puts 
the origin of See-Bishops rather 
earlier than I have done ; for 
such "contentions arose" quite 
early in Apostolic times. This 
famous Epistle, so often quoted 
in part, ought to be read as a 
whole. It would then be seen, 
that S. Jerome's object is to show 



that a Presbyter is superior to a 
Deacon in priesthood — sacerdotio 
esse major cm ; and that in respect 
of the same priesthood, Presby- 
ters, Bisliops, and Apostles are 
equal : a point universally con- 
ceded. This fact considered, his 
concluding words give the sum 
of his view of the ministry : 
" What Aaron, and his sons, and 
the Levites, were in the Temple, 
the same are Bisliops. Presbyters, 
and Deacons in the Church." 
The case of the Church of Alex- 
andria, mentioned by S. Jerome 
and Ambrosiaster, is somewhat 
peculiar ; but I reserve the dis- 
cussion of it for another place. 
See Book ii., ch. 10, of this His- 
tory. See, also, Chapin, chap. xv. 



CH. XI.] CHUECH GOVERNMENT. 85 

In this way the Bishopric, or Apostolate, as com- The E P is- 
missioned by our Lord after the Resurrection, had seif- P er- 
its own seed within it, and was every where trans- 
mitted and acknowledged as the sole supreme gov- 
erning and ordaining power. The only power not 
thus transmitted was that of working miracles. But 
that, as we have seen, was given before, not after 
the Resurrection ; and belonged then, as at all other 
times, to the extraordinary " prophetic office :" name- 
ly, to that kind of preaching which prepares the way 
for a new system, or lays the foundations. 

About the time that this beginning of a succession ^ee 
was made among the Gentile Churches, S. James, 
the first Bishop of Jerusalem, died, and Symeon, a 
cousin of our Lord, was elected in his place. In the 
generation that immediately followed, there is one 
inspired witness of the order then existing, and two 
uninspired. 

S. John, addressing the mystical Seven Churches f^^j. 
of Asia, exhorts or reproves their respective An- ^ itQes s- 
gels, a term etymologically equivalent to the 
word Apostles, and, as used by the writer of the 
Apocalypse, implying the same as Bishops in the 
modern sense. A question arises, however, whether 
the severe rebukes which prove these Angels to have 
been responsible heads of the seven Churches do not 
also prove them to have been subordinate to the 
Apostle S. John. 26 To this the obvious answer is 
that S. John merely writes "what the Spirit saith," 
in the character of a Prophet or Divine. In other 

20 Thiersch, the Irvingite his- supposes, it would not prove the 

torian, uses this supposed fact to three distinct orders of the Epis- 

prove the existence of his three- copate ; it would merely point to 

fold Episcopate, Apostles, Angels, a metropolitan system. 
Bishops. If the fact were as he 



86 HISTOKY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. I. 

words, it is not John who calls the seven Angels to 
account ; it is the Lord Himself. 27 There is nothing 
in the Apocalypse, therefore, to prove the existence 
of any office on earth, at that time, superior in order 
to that of the seven Angels. On the contrary, the 
fact that the Lord Himself addresses them, and not 
the Apostle, rather proves them to have been in a 
position of accountability to the Lord alone. 
thSeS ^e second witness of this period, S. Clement of 
witness. Rome, by referring to the sacerdotal analogy of 
High-Priests, Priests, and Levites, or to the military 
rriestiy analogy of Prefects, Chiliarchs, Centurions and other 
Military, officers, shows incidentally, and therefore the more 
powerfully, that the principle of subordination, or 
prelacy, was acknowledged in the Ministry. In the 
same incidental way he mentions Rulers and Presby- 
ters in one place, Bishops and Deacons in another. 28 
He testifies also that the order of succession was set- 
divinei tied by Divine Providence and by Apostolic authori- 
sing, ty™ « The Apostles knew from our Lord Jesus Christ 
that contention would arise about the name of the 
Bishopric ; for which reason, being possessed of 
perfect foreknowledge, they appointed the said 
(Bishops and Deacons), and gave order for the 
future, how, when these fell asleep, other aj3proved 
men might be set in their place." This, he adds, 
was settled with the consent of the whole Church. 
It is plain, therefore, that the provision against 
schism, which some have represented as made by 
Presbyters after the Apostolic age, was made in 

27 Rev. i. 11. this point, because the sentence, 

28 S. Clem. Ep. Cap. i. xlii. xliv. in relation to other points, is 
29 1 quote S. Clement only for somewhat confused. 



CH. XI.] CHURCH GOVERNMENT. 87 

reality by the Apostles, nnder divine inspiration, 
and was received universally. 

S. Ignatius of Antioch, whose ministerial life had ^Jgjjjj" 
been for thirty years contemporaneous with that of witness. 
S. John, is still more positive in his testimony. That 
" the Episcopate is represented by him as the divine- 
ly appointed pillar which sustains the whole eccle- 
siastical fabric," 30 is now universally conceded by 
intelligent historians. It is therefore hardly necessary 
to cite his words : it is enough to remark, that his 
witness, on this subject, is unaffected by the contro- 
versy with regard to the genuineness of certain 
portions of his remaining Epistles. 31 

A question still remains, as to how far the Episco- Metro- 

i it t«a i • • i politan 

pate, thus settled, assumed m Apostolic times that system, 
metropolitan form which it afterwards bore, and to 
which in all ages it naturally, and perhaps logically, 
tends. 32 

30 Dr. Hase, Hist, of Christian been controlled by our Lord him- 
Church, § 59. This writer adds, self in the appointment of twelve 
and Dr. Schaff followB him in the brethren, who were to call no man 
assertion, that the Episcopate father, i. e., pope, upon earth, but 
" much needed his earnest commen- were to hold to their Head in 
dations ;" namely, that it was a Heaven. In other words, every 
novelty, and therefore needed de- thing in the Church tends to a 
fence. If earnest commendation centre, or point ; the only ques- 
of a thing is proof of its novelty, tion is, where that centre is to be 
we shall have to regard the very found. Some say in Rome. We 
Faith itself as a novelty ; for say in Heaven. Some make " the 
there is not a writer, from S. Paul kingdom" perfect here on earth, 
down, who does not earnestly We regard it as imperfect here, 
commend it. and therefore wait for "His ap- 

31 Dr. Hase, § 73, fully admits pearing and Kingdom." To this I 
this : see, also, Cureton, Corpus might add, that those, who repre- 
Ignatianum; and Schaff, Hist, sent the original government of 
<fec. the Church as Presbyterian, yet 

32 Dr. Schaff urges, that the acknowledge that it changed into 
logical tendency of Episcopacy is Episcopal in one or two'genera- 
to absolute centralization, i. e., tions. How can they escape the 
Popery. So would I say, if this inference, that Presbyterianism 
centralizing tendency had not logically tends to Episcopacy ? 



HISTOEY OF THE CHUECH. [bk. I. 

Mother It is certain, that among the ancients the mother 



city was not only a centre of social and political 
influence, but an object of those loyal, reverential, 
affectionate feelings, which in modern times we 
associate rather with the word fatherland, or 
mother country. By devoting so much of their 
time as they did to these great centres, the Apos- 
tles availed themselves of this state of things, and, it 
may be said, gave their countenance to it. They 
made the centres of religious influence coincident 
with those of social or political power. It was natu- 
ral, therefore, that whatever equality might exist 
among Bishops, Angels, or Apostles, as such, consid- 
erable inequalities should arise as to the influence 
and weight of their respective Sees, 
denctof Th us James, one of the last and least of the Apos- 
jerusaiem ^ e ^ came to have a certain precedence over Peter 
and John. 83 Doubtless, it was because he was the 
head of the Mother Church. In after times Jerusa- 
lem which had been first, came to be last, in point 
of influence among the chief Churches. As soon as 
this was the case, the Bishop of Jerusalem ranked 
accordingly. 
Two-foid The metropolitan system, therefore, and in fact the 

character x «/ 7 

of Bishops, whole system of precedence that obtained in the 
early Church, was a natural development from the 
two-fold representative character of Bishops. As 
representatives of Christ, the Head, all Bishops were 

33 This appears in the Council, ment of the importance of tho 

Acts xv. The placing of his Church which he represented, 

name before those of Cephas and The same is to be said of the 

John, Gal. ii. 9, is an argument of prayer pro fidelibus in the Ap. 

a certain precedence ; though I Constitutions, where the Bishop 

do not think it amounts to any of Jerusalem is prayed for before 

thing more than an acknowledg- him of Rome and Antioch. 



CH. XI.] CHUKCH GOVERNMENT. 89 

" brethren," " colleagues," peers. As representatives 
of particular Churches, or cities, they could allow 
certain distinctions of honor or of power to grow up 
among them. Differences of this kind developed, 
and were more clearly systematized and defined, as 
the way was gradually opened for provincial or gen- 
eral Councils. 

It was, in fact, one'form in which the lay element, Jjj!®^* 
as it has been sometimes called, — the influence of dence - 
numbers, masses, position, and other things that 
have weight in secular affairs, — gradually made it- 
self to be felt in the government of the Church. 
Hence the rule of precedence that prevailed, and 
which was firmly maintained by the six ecumenical 
Councils, was, that Bishops should rank according to 
the importance of their Sees. Rome, indeed, con- 
tended for a different rule. Foundation by S. Peter 
presented, in her judgment, a superior claim. But 
in spite of her efforts, ecclesiastical precedence fol- 
lowed the changes of political, and instead of Jeru- 
salem, Caesarea, Antioch, Rome, Alexandria, the 
order of the Churches came in time to be — Rome, 
Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and, last of all, 
Jerusalem. 

All this, however, belongs to later history. In How . de - 

7 ' <-> T i termined. 

Apostolic times the question of precedence was little 
thought of ; and, so far as it was considered, it seems 
to have been determined by the rules of equity and 
common sense. 



90 



HISTOEY OF THE CHUECH. 



[bk. I. 



CHAPTEK Xn. 



DOCTKTNE AND HERESIES. 



The 
Gospel. 



Christ 
come in 
the Flesh. 



When the Disciples were sent two by two before 
the face of the Lord, as prophets of the Kingdom, 
their prophesying was summed up in the one preg- 
nant phrase, The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. 
In the same way, when the Apostles went forth, their 
evangel, gospel, god-spell, or good news, was the 
announcement and explication of the simple historic 
fact, that the Head of that promised Kingdom had 
truly come and done the work which the Prophets 
of the Old Testament had so long before predicted. 
More briefly stated : it was simply God manifest in 
the Flesh. This involved the verity, that He had been 
born, had lived, suffered, died, and especially had 
risen from the dead, and ascended up in triumph to 
the Right Hand of the Majesty on high. To witness 
to this truth was the office for which the Church had 
been created. To receive the same in its fulness ; to 
embrace it with all the heart, all the soul, all the 
mind ; to measure all other truth by it, making it 
the " analogy," or " rule of faith ;" to discern it in 
its moral, and intellectual, as well as spiritual bear- 
ings ;* in short, to admit it wholly, in all its conse- 
quences, as a living principle pervading the whole 



1 Examples of tins measuring- 
of all truth and duty by " the 
Gospel," are Rom. vi. 1-14 ; 1 



Cor. xv. 1, 3, 11, 12, etc.; Ephes. 
v. 22-33 ; Coloss. ii. 12 ; iii. 1-5; 
1 Pet. iv. 1 ; 1 John, iv. 2. 



CH. XII.] DOCTRINE AND HERESIES. 91 

life, was to be the substance of right faith, and the 
sum of sound doctrine to the end of time. 

But nature is always partial or one-sided in its ap- JJj« s e of 
prehension of the Truth. Measuring every thing by Heresy. 
a standard of human imperfection, it is naturally 
eclectic, choosing its own ground or point of view, 
and holding one half of a doctrine, to the denial, ex- 
clusion, or overlaying of other parts equally vital 
and essential. For, in the reception of any fact or 
doctrine, almost every thing depends upon the stand- 
ing-point assumed. A man of transcendental turn, 
relying exclusively on his own spiritual intuitions, l^ tn ' 
will despise the sensible evidences, the miracles, the 
sacraments, the scriptures, the external body of Re- 
ligion. Such men fall into gnostic, mystic, transcen- 
dental, or spiritualist heresies. Another class of men 
believe in nought but rational induction, or logical 
demonstration. Like the Jews of old, they are al- 
wavs demanding " a sign." Such men are apt to Ration- 

J ° & £ alist. 

become positivists, rationalists, their pravity taking 
sometimes a negative or skeptical, and sometimes, 
when the mind grows weary of denying, an arbitra- 
rily positive form. But, to the great mass of men, 
Religion is a matter of feeling, or affection, rather sensuous, 
than of speculative insight, or rational conviction ; 
and this bias, taking sometimes an enthusiastic, 
sometimes an aesthetic, or sometimes a legal and 
moral turn, leads in its excess to a numerous class 
of sensuous heresies. 

Such being the well-known proclivities of the Divine 
human heart, it pleased our Lord, in giving His point. 
Truth to men, to provide at the same time a divine 
standing-point from which the Truth was to be re- 
garded. Those who believed were to be baptized. 



Three 

Leanings 



92 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bK. 1. 

As there was one Spirit, there was to be one Body. 
Those who held to the doctrine of the Apostles were to 
hold to their fellowship. The Church, in short, was 
appointed to be the pillar and ground of the Truth. 

differences But even in the best balanced minds, and from 
whatever ground or point of view, there will be 
more or less of a tendency to one or other of the 
extremes above mentioned. In this life we can know 
but in part ; we can see but through a glass darkly. 
According, therefore, to the inherent peculiarities of 
each individual nature, there will be a disposition to 
look at Truth through the sensuous, the rational, or 
the transcendental glass, and thus to fall into partial 
or heretical opinions. This leaning, however, when 
guarded and controlled by mutual charity, and by a 
ground of unity sufficiently defined, is not only 
harmless, but wholesome ; bringing out the one 
Truth in a greater variety of aspects, and making it 
intelligible to a greater variety of minds. 

types op Of this wholesome development in particular 

Doctrine. x x 

directions, S. John, S. Paul, and S. Peter were the 
most prominent representatives in Apostolic times. 
S. John delighted to contemplate the absolute, simple 
Truth : the Truth as seen in itself, as seen in God. 
He was therefore the type of the theologian, or 
divine. S. Paul presented the Truth rather in its 
manifold relations to the waywardness and weakness 
of the human understanding. 2 He is the type of the 

2 On the subject of this para- the student, who will take the 

graph the German critics have pains to trace, not merely the dif- 

shown much solid, as well as ferent modes of thought or expres- 

hrilliant ingenuity: some of sion among the sacred writers, 

them, such as Baur, with a view but their wonderful harmony, the 

to magnify different waj T s of see- study of this subject will be 

ing, into differences of belief. To found well worthy of attention. 



CH. XII.] DOCTKINE AND HEKESIES. 93 

able reasoner, the versatile expounder, the ready 
controversialist, the profound and skilful teacher. 
S. Peter, endowed by nature with affections intensely 
human, found it more congenial to " taste the Lord 
as gracious," than to behold Him with eagle eye as 
the Light and Life. To S. John Christ was the in- s. John, 
carnate "Word;" to S. Paul "the Apostle ands.raui. 
High-Priest of our profession ;" to S. Peter " the s. Peter. 
Bishop and Shepherd of our souls." S. John, from 
his high pitch of contemplation, addressed the body 
of believers as "little children;" S. Paul wrestled 
with them on more equal terms, as "men" and 
"brethren;" S. Peter singled out one class or an- 
other, as husbands, wives, masters, servants, elders, 
juniors, or when he addressed them as a mass, it 
was with the pastoral word "beloved." Without 
entering into all the distinctions of this kind, which 
have been pointed out by critics, and considerably 
exaggerated, it may be observed, in short, that while 
each of these great teachers presented the whole and 
living Truth, S. John dwells chiefly on the Incarna- 
tion as a mysterious whole, a " light" illumining all 
other lights ; S. Paul on the Death and Resurrection, 
especially the latter, as the logical basis of all doc- 
trine, all morals, and all "glory;" S. Peter on the 
living, toiling, suffering, bleeding, dying Christ, as 
the " precious" example, the precious ransom, the 
irresistible appeal to all noble, earnest, tender, and 
generous affections. To these S. James is sometimes s. James, 
added, as representing a fourth position. To judge 
from his Epistle, he is less a representative of doc- 
trine than of that reactionary appeal to conscience 
and common sense, which becomes necessary when 
doctrinal discussion has gone too far ; when ortho- 



94 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [BK. I. 

doxy, in fact, is made a substitute for faith. To 
heated polemics, therefore, in times of dogmatic strife, 
this remarkable production has seemed a mere 
" epistle of straw." 3 In other times, and under other 
circumstances, amid the lip-worship and licentious- 
ness of a self-seeking age, it comes up as a sharp 
point of that ancient rock of common truth under- 
lying all religion, the Sermon on the Mount. 
Harmony Differences of this kind may be allowed for, without 
Apostles, imagining any thing analogous to separate schools 
or parties in the Apostolic Church. Pauline and 
Petrine factions may undoubtedly have existed ; but 
the great teachers knew nothing of them, except to 
repudiate them. They understood themselves, and 
understood one another. 

It may be observed, moreover, by way of counter- 
poise to the distinctions above mentioned, that each 
of the great Apostles glides occasionally, in his style, 
into the peculiarities of the others. S. John, for 
instance, dwells on the sensible manifestation of the 
Gospels. Word of Life ; S. Paul frequently pauses to admire 
" the mystery of godliness ;" S. Peter speaks of " the 
word," that is, the truth, as the regenerating power. 
The same may be said of the differences of the four 
Gospels. While it is true that the Man and Prophet 
appears most prominently in S. Matthew, the King 
in S. Mark, the Priest in S. Luke, and the essential 
Deity in S. John, 4 yet there is no one of the four 

3 Luther, in his impatience, so before James was thoroughly ac- 
characterized it : It was under quainted with the Gospel, 
other circumstances, that Butler 4 Hence, the application, to the 
and Bull drew from it appropri- four Evangelists, of the four faces 
ate lessons for the times. Nean- respectively of the " living crea- 
mer is so unappreciative of this ures" in the Apocalypse, the man, 
Epistle, that he arbitrarily sup- the Hon, the ox, the eagle, 
poses it to have been written 



CH. XII.] DOCTKINE AND HERESIES. 95 

Evangelists in which, all do not appear. There are 
distinctions, in short, bnt no antagonisms. 

To this general account of the great types of doc- scope of 

o ... & i n 1 1 doctrinal 

trmal development, it is necessary to add that the history. 
Apostles, like their Master, were seed-sowers of the 
Truth, not framers of systems. To give their teach- 
ing, therefore, in other language than their own, 
comes hardly within the legitimate province of the 
historian. The attempt has been made, indeed, by 
innumerable modern critics ; and under the heads of 
the theology, anthropology, soteriology, ecclesiology, 
and eschatology of the sacred writers, valuable contri- 
butions have been made to the cause of biblical 
interpretation. Yet none of these efforts represents, 
or in the nature of things can represent, more than 
the amount of truth seen from particular points of 
view. 6 As contributions to sacred criticism they all 
have their value. As accounts of what the Apostles 
taught, in determination of questions still sub lite, 
they are worse than useless ; giving the garb of his- 
toric fact to th|pgs which, however excellent and 
ingenious, are nothing more or less than private and 
modern schemes of polemical divinity. 

The History of Apostolic doctrine must confine Proper 
itself to a somewhat narrower range. Not what sys- 

5 Th.ev?orddevelopmenth.a.s'be&n. minded and most genial of his- 

mnch abused by Dr. Newman and toric critics of this kind ; yet, in 

others, in modern times ; yet I his " Planting of Christianity," S. 

know of no word to substitute for Paul, S. John, S. Peter, and even 

it in the history of doctrine. The our Lord Himself, are completely 

term, in fact, is harmless, if we ISTeanderized. Thiersch, in the 

are careful not to confound devel- same way, has beautifully Irving- 

opment, — which is the opening, ized the Doctrine of the Apostles; 

defining, and applying of truths a thing which would be less ob- 

contained in Holy Writ, — with jectionable if it were done in a 

corruptions and accretions de- professed " commentary," or in 

rived from other sources. an Lrvingite tract, and not under 

6 Eeander is one of the largest- the garb of " history." 



Four 
Heads 



96 HISTORY OF THE CHUECH. [bk. I. 

terns these first Teachers taught, but what materials, 
what conditions, what elements they left of systems 
afterwards drawn from them, or put upon them, is the 
utmost that can be attempted in a narrative of facts. 
And these elements may all be considered under 
four heads : 1. The Oral Teaching, or Tradition of 
the Apostles ; 2. Their Creed, or Eule of Faith ; 3. 
Their Inspired Writings ; 4. The Heresies against 
which they contended, and which may have influ- 
enced more or less the form, style, manner, or par- 
ticular topics of their teaching. 
i. oral The Apostles taught orally. Their doctrine, there- 

Teaching. x ° ^ . 

fore, had to be treasured in the memories of believers. 
If we consider how vast the field was, and how many 
of the laborers in this field must have been, like 
Apollos, imperfectly instructed, it will not appear 
wonderful that a corrupt tradition spread almost as 
rapidly as the true ; and that many things were 
attributed to Apostles for which they were not 
responsible. Thus, S. Paul had hardly left the 
Church of Thessalonica before he ^earned that his 

jfoon 1 ^ doctrine of Christ's coming had been misunderstood. 

rupted. j n ^q sanie way, the traditions that flowed into the 
second century were very soon corrupted. They 
were almost invariably alleged in favor of doubtful 
facts, or heretical opinions. Papias, it is said, took 
great pains to collect the genuine sayings of our 
Lord. But few of these gleanings have remained 
in the literature of the Church ; 7 and these few give 
little occasion to regret that the rest have perished. 

Tradition Tradition, in the sense of the general spirit or drift 
ra ' of Apostolic teaching, or instructions embodied in 

7 See Routh, Reliq. Sac. voL i. 



CH. XII.] DOCTKIXE AND HERESIES. 97 

particular observances, were of a more enduring, 
character, and exerted, without doubt, a greater 
influence. Thus, the sacredness of the Lord's Day, 
the practice of infant baptism, the authority of the 
Old Testament, the use of Creeds, and other things 
of like character, might easily remain when mere 
words or phrases would be forgotten or perverted. 
The same might be said of every thing in which the 
second century was unanimous. The mind of an 
age, however, is so entirely assimilated by the age 
which follows, that, in general, tradition means little 
more than the prevailing sentiment of the day in 
which it is appealed to. We find, accordingly, that 
even in matters of practical observance, the Apos- 
tolic tradition came soon to be suspected, unless it 
were supported by Apostolic writings. 8 

The first bulwark raised against the corruption of n. thb 

Creed 

tradition was probably in the form of a brief Creed, 
or Rule of Faith. 9 Something of this sort is fre- 
quently alluded to in the New Testament, in such 
expressions as " the form of sound words," " the 
gospel," or evangel, "the faith once (for all) de- 
livered to the Saints," or " the doctrine" into which 
they "were delivered;" 10 S. Paul, especially, not 
only referring to such a "gospel" once preached, 
but declaring it so unalterable that neither he nor 

8 S. Cyprian, in the question of tically a rule of faith. The brief 
re-baptizing heretics, would ac- summary of the Gospel, there- 
knowledge no tradition but that fore, which all believers received, 
which he found in Scripture. would be in a peculiar, but not 

9 I use the phrase, as a con- exclusive sense, the rule of faith, 
venient one, without any refer- See Hagenbach, Hist, of Doc- 
ence to controversies on the sub- trines, § 20. 

ject. In the common-sense use 10 Rom. vi. IV; literally, "the 
of words, any thing once fixed as type of doctrine into which ye 
a matter of belief becomes prac- were delivered." 



Faith 



98 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. I. 

an angel from heaven could deviate from it. The 
natural outline of this summary would be suggested 
by the first formal act of faith. Every person ad- 
baptismai m itted in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, 
and of the Holy Ghost, into the Church Catholic, by 
Baptism, for the Remission of Sins, with a view to 
the Resurrection of the Dead and the Life everlast- 
ing, would of course be required to say "credo" to 
all this ; and that he might say it in good faith, 
would be instructed into its meaning. But those 
few words, briefly qualified or explained, make up 
the outline and the substance of the Creeds or Sym- 
bols of all ages. Such an outline, moreover, com- 
mitted to memory by every believer, would be a 
" rule of faith ;" that is, a touchstone of sound doc- 
trine, alike available to learned and unlearned, to 
readers and simple hearers. 

symbols in the absence of any direct evidence to the con- 
numerous. > «/ 

trary, 11 it seems most probable, that the filling up of 
this outline was not always in the same words ; but 
that the forms of confession were marked from the 
beginning by the same diversity in language, with 
the same identity in substance, which we find among 
the symbols of a somewhat later period. By slight 
verbal variations shades of meaning might be ex- 
pressed in one, which were not contained in others. 
Like the four Gospels, or the four ancient Liturgies, 
the creeds would thus be mutually completed, guard- 
ed, and explained. 

11 Bp. Bull contends 'for two have been more. On the general 

primitive Creeds — that of Jerusa- subject see History of Creed*, by 

lem in the East, and that of the Rev. W. W. Harvey, M. A. ; and 

Apostles in the West. I can see Bingham's Antiquities of the 

no reason why there should not Christian Church, x. iii. 5. 



CH. XH.] DOCTRINE AND HERESIES. 99 

But a safeguard would be needed against corrup- m. sa- 

° ° X CRED 

tions of the Creeds themselves ; and still more against writings. 
corruptions of the larger, more diffuse, and more 
minute instructions of the Lord, and of His Apostles. 
The four Gospels therefore were written ; not early, 
nor all at once, but at certain intervals, under 
varied circumstances, by different writers, and yet 
with a harmony absolutely demonstrative of a divine 
authorship. Of these S. Matthew's was probably 
put forth before the Apostles left Jerusalem, and Acts. 
possibly in Hebrew, or Aramaic. S. Mark's, indited 
under the auspices of S. Peter, is of uncertain date. 
S. Luke's, and its continuation, the Acts of the 
Apostles, appear to have been written either during 
or shortly after the first imprisonment of S. Paul. 
The Gospel of S. John was stored up in the bosom 
of the beloved Disciple till near the close of the first 
century. We learn from S. Luke, that many had 
taken in hand to write narratives of this kind ; so 
that a bulwark was needed against unreliable Scrip- 
tures, as well as against corrupted forms of oral 
tradition. 12 

The Catholic Epistles seem all to have been the <? th . er 

. Scriptures. 

fruit of the later years of their respective writers. 
The Epistles of S. Paul were written to particular 
Churches, or persons, on particular emergencies ; 
and may be dated from internal evidence with con- 
siderable precision. 13 The Apocalypse, which ap- 
peared about the year ninety-five, has been appro- 

12 The uninspired writings of this ascribed to this age, were corn- 
period are the first Epistle of S. posed in the second century, or 
Clement, and perhaps the second : later. For a list of them see 
possibly, also, the Epistle of S. Foulkes's Manual of Ecclesiastical 
Barnabas, and the Pastor of History. 
Hermas. The spurious writings, 13 See Chap. iv. of this Book. 



100 HISTOKY OF THE CHUECH. [BK. I. 

priately placed at the close of the sacred series : its 
splendid and mystic imagery forming, as it were, the 
great Altar-window of the Temple of Inspiration. 
callnter- ^- n addition to these sacred writings, the Scriptures 
pretation. f the Old Testament were earnestly commended to 
the first age of believers, as inspired, and profitable 
The testi- for doctrine ; and in the interpretation of them, the 
jesus the "testimony of Jesus" was made the "spirit of 
prophecy, prophecy." The consequence was, that " the rule 
of faith" became also the rule of interpretation. 
That analogical process, by which, in reading the 
Old Testament, we almost unconsciously transmute 
the letter into the spirit, seeing Christ everywhere, 
became the fixed habit of the Church mind ; and oc- 
casionally degenerated into frivolous allegorizing. 14 
The historical importance of this fact can hardly be 
overrated. For on the mode of interpretation favor- 
ed by any age, its theological drift is in a great 
measure determined. It may be observed, that the 
Gnostics had little reverence for the Old Testament 
Scriptures ; they used them largely, however, and 
applied both to them and to the writings of the 
New Testament, the allegorical method. 15 But their 
allegorizing was purely arbitrary ; that of the Chris- 
tians was kept within bounds by the dominant influ- 
ence of " the analogy of the faith." In both cases 
it was application of the Scriptures rather than 

14 The Epistle to the Hebrews ties of S. Ignatius show less of 

exhibits a severe moderation in it. S. Irenseus, and the Fathers 

the use of this method. The after him, carry it occasionally to 

Epistle of Barnabas, which may excess. Origen developed it into 

belong, however, to the second a more systematic shape, 

century, indulges in it with the 15 For ingenious specimens of 

utmost freedom : so, also, the this perversion, see Simon Magus 

Shepherd of Hernias. The Epis- in Refutat. Omn. Hceresium, S. 

tie of S. Clement and the Epis- Hippolyti, lib. vi. 



CH. Xn.] DOCTRINE AND HERESIES. 101 

strict interpretation. This is seen in the fact, that 
diverse applications of the same text, so long as they 
did not contradict the commonly received doctrines, 
were not regarded as contradicting one another. 

In the Apostolic age, as in the Church since, the iv. 
development, definition, or application of doctrine 
waited on opportunity, and had more or less of a de- 
fensive character against errors, or erroneous tenden- 
cies of the times. No heretics are mentioned by 
name in the New Testament, with the exception of 
the Nicolaitans ; and, perhaps, Hymenasus and 
Alexander, whose " shipwreck of faith," however, 
may have been simple apostasy. The Diotrephes, 
censured by S. John in his second Epistle, was prob- 
ably an ambitious Presbyter, or a tyrannizing Bishop. 
Heretical opinions are more frequently alluded to. 
But as they are not described, and are combated 
only in their elementary principles, it camiot be as- 
certained how far any of them had assumed a sys- 
tematic shape. 

Among the Greeks and philosophic Jews, there gnosis. 
was an arrogant and pretentious speculative spirit, 
which judged all religions by its own instincts <w in- 
tuitions, discerned some good in all, and was dis- 
posed to frame, out of materials drawn from all, a 
more scientific system. By the votaries of this 
gnosis, or " science falsely so called," the principle 
that evil inheres in matter 16 was an axiom universal- Evil in 
ly admitted. They despised the physical world as 
the creation of some inferior and perhaps evil 
Power. The body they considered a mere encum- 
brance, instead of holding it in honor (as some- 

16 Opposed by such passages as 1 Tim. iv. 4. 



102 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. I. 

thing pertaining) to the completeness of our ku- 
Thesoui manity. 17 They regarded the soul as a sort of 

a captive. ,. J ., , \ ■■ % ., _ _. _ 

captive, and looked tor its deliverance in the entire 
destruction of the body after death, and during life 
in complete abstraction from it. Hence great aus- 
terities among some. Hence an opinion among 
others, that the distinction of good and evil, so far 
as this, world is concerned, is a mere thesis, or arbi- 
trary appointment devised by evil Powers. Where 
such maxims prevailed, a denial of the resurrection 
of the body, 16 or an assertion of a spiritual resurrec- 
tion only, would necessarily follow. The doctrine of 
the Incarnation would either be denied or subtly ex- 
plained away. Among efforts of this kind the doce- 
Docetae. tic theory, namely, Christ a pure spirit with a phan- 
tasmal or aj)paritional body, was one of the earliest 
and most popular. From numerous expressions in 
the New Testament it is highly probable, that the 
idea of apleroma, or fulness of God's presence, from 
which all bodily existence is excluded; 19 of "end- 
less genealogies," that is, processions or emanations 
of ceons, angels, principalities, powers, a long chain 
of mediators between the world and God ; and, in 
short, all the elementary notions which afterwards 
entered into the various Gnostic systems, were in 
vogue among the Greeks or Hellenizing Hebrews, 

1T Such, seems to me the mean- ness of the Godhead (pleroma) 

ing of the original in Col. ii. 23 ; dwells bodily, Col. ii. 9. This 

the word translated " satisfac- chapter, the most suggestive on 

tion" being equivalent to com- the subject, can hardly be under- 

pleteness, and that rendered stood without careful reference to 

" flesh" standing often (as in S. the original. Other Anti-Gnostic 

John, i. 14) for man. passages are (perhaps) 1 Tim. i. 

18 1 Cor. xv. 12. 4 ; iv. 1-5 ; vi. 20 ; 1 John, i. 1- 

19 To which S. Paul opposes 3; iv. 1-3; 2 Peter, ii; Jude. 
the truth, that in Christ the ful- See Hammond on the New Test. 



CH. XII.] DOCTRINE AND HERESIES. 103 

and were started into activity by the preaching of 
the Gospel. 

To Simon Magus, a philosopher and wonder-worker simon 
of no ordinary powers, and to Samaria the home of 
mixed races and mixed creeds, tradition has assigned 
the earliest attempt at a definite Gnostic system. 
His views come down to ns encumbered with the 
accretions of later times. " From Sige, Silence, the sige. 
invisible, incomprehensible, eternal root of all things, 
sprang two mighty powers : the one above called 
Nous, the universal directing mind, which is of the nous. 
male sex ; the other below, a female, JEpinoia, or in- Epinoia. 
telligence, by which all things are generated." 20 
From these two roots sprang four others, similarly, 
in pairs. The story that Simon identified Helen, his 
concubine, with Helen of Troy and other female 
firebrands of antiquity, and made her a sort of im- 
personation of that "lost sheep" wandering here 
below, Epinoia or intelligence, looks like a genuine 
tradition, and accords with the radically antinomian 
character of most of the early sects. To him the 
world was evil, society evil, marriage evil. The 
spirit, therefore, that rebels against law and order, 
was, from his point of view, the imprisoned divine 
spark struggling to be free. He availed himself 
largely of the language of the Old Testament, put- 
ting his own meaning upon it : and borrowed from 
Christianity some notions of redemption. He rep- 
resented himself to be the great Power of God — the 
Father to Samaritans, the Son to Jews, the Holy 
Ghost to Gentiles — come into the world for the re- 
covery of the " lost sheep." 

20 Hippolytus quotes from Simon at some length ; and his ac- 



104 



HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. 



[EK. I. 



Dositheus, 
Menander. 



Nicolai- 
tans. 



Historic 
import- 



Sknsuods 
Heresies. 



Schism. 



Dositheus and Menander were likewise Samari- 
tans, and endeavored in like manner to appropriate 
to themselves the character of redeemers. The M- 
colaitanes, 21 referred to in the Apocalypse, were 
Gnostics only in the larger sense of the word ; pro- 
fessing that kind of gnosis, or superior light, which 
makes all bodily acts indifferent, and regards all 
things as lawful. They were equally opposed to the 
moral and the ceremonial law. 

Heresies of this kind sprang from the indulgence 
of a profane speculative spirit. They are interesting 
as showing, that the advent of the Gospel did not 
find the world slumbering, but awake and com- 
pletely armed, ready not only to contest every inch 
of ground, but to avail itself for this purpose of 
weapons drawn from the armory of Christianity 
itself. 

Towards sensuous or carnal errors, a class which 
tends less to contradict than to overlay and corrupt 
the faith, there was a most decided proclivity among 
the Corinthian Christians ; showing itself in an over- 
estimate of " gifts," in a tendency to man- worship, 
in party and sect spirit, in desire to "judge" and 
" reign," and in a disorderly state of things general- 
ly. 22 The love of novelty and excitement had much 
to do with this. Towards the end of the century it 



count of the heresy is probably 
the most accurate that has come 
down to us. 

21 They got their name, it is 
said, from Mcolaus, one of the 
seven Deacons; See Euseb. iii. 
29. That the Antinomian spirit 
early availed itself of pretensions 
to knowledge, gnosis, which ex- 
empted its possessors from or- 
dinary restraints, is obvious from 



the use of the word "knowledge" 
throughout the whole of 1 Cor. 
viii. 

22 1 Cor. iii. 1, 3. 4, 21 ; iv. 3, 
8, 18; xi. 17-22; xiv. 26; et 
passim : the general effect of here- 
sy of this sort seems to be in- 
timated in 1 Cor. iii. 12-15; it 
does not oppose the fundamental 
faith, but overbuilds it with in- 
congruous materials. 



CH. Xn.] DOCTRINE AND HEEESIES. 105 

had grown to such an extent, that a large party in 
Corinth proposed to make the ministry not only an 
elective, but a rotatory office. 23 The same spirit 
showed itself elsewhere in fleshly notions of the 
millennium, and of the nearness of Christ's coming. 
It is remarkable, that, as the speculative religionists Gifts over- 
dignified their fancies with the high sounding name 
of gnosis, so the carnal Corinthians, in magnifying 
" gifts" and splitting up into parties, seem to have 
thought themselves preeminently "spiritual." 24 

The Judaizing spirit, in its proper and pure form, Judaic 
seems to have been of a rationalistic kind, springing 
from low and earthly views of the character of the 
Messiah. 26 In Pharisee and Sadducee alike, it was 
captious and full of doubts. It stumbled especially 
at the Divinity of Christ, and at the Catholicity of 
His mission. It was always demanding "signs," 
yet slow of heart to believe when signs were given. 
But the Pentecostal age was unfavorable to the de- 
velopment of a spirit of this kind ; so that, beyond a 
stubborn prejudice against the mission of S. Paul, 
and a disposition to linger in the mere elements of 
Christianity, the Judaizing tendency was effectually 
kept down. The Sect in which it finally showed 
itself with least admixture of foreign elements, was 
the respectable but little known society of the Naza- Nazarenes 
renes. Acquiescence in the creed, a cordial recep- 

23 Such seems to me the most 25 The real drift of the Judaic 
rational account of that sedition spirit is seen in such passages, aa 
in Corinth, against which S. Cle- S. Luke, iv. 28 ; xxii. 70, 11 ; S. 
ment's letter was written. The John, iii. 9 ; iv. 48 ; v. 18; vi. 52; 
Corinthians contended for the viii. 58, 59 ; xix. 7; Acts, vii. 52; 
right to depose Presbyters with- xi. 3 ; xiii. 45 ; xv. 1 ; xxii. 21, 
out any crime proven against 22; Heb. iii. 3-6; v. 11-14, and 
them. vi. 1 ; Gal. ii. 13, 16 ; v. 1-6, etc., 

24 1 Cor. xiv. 87. etc. 

5* 



106 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. I. 

tion of the Sermon on the Mount, observance of the 
Law, adherence to the Gospel of S. Matthew to the 
exclusion of later Scriptures, and an undue elevation 
of morals above doctrine, seem to have been its pro- 

Biind men minent characteristics. Of the three stages of light 
and knowledge described by Origen — namely, Jesus 
the son of David, Christ the incarnate Son, and 
the everlasting Word, — the Nazarenes preferred to 
linger in the first and lowest stage; "they were 
blind men, for ever crying, Jesus, Son of David, have 
mercy on me." 

cerinthus. As a general rule, the obstructive Judaizers either 
yielded to the demonstrations of power which accom- 
panied the Gospel, or were drawn into a vortex of 
gnostic and sensuous speculations. Hence a form 
of gnosis, which was a medley of all notions. Ce- 
rinthus, as described by Epiphanius, is the type of 
this class. At first a ring-leader of the opponents 
of S. Paul, but disabled and not a little disgusted at 
the course of James and Peter in the Council at 
Jerusalem, he continued to maintain in part the in- 
violability of the Law, but engrafted upon it germs 
from the Samaritan philosophy. The world he re- 
presented as created and administered by lower 

Christ gods, or seons. The heavenly Christ, an a3on of the 

an jEon. ^{g^eg^ order, descended upon the blameless Jesus, 
the son of Joseph and Mary, at his baptism in the 
Jordan, inhabited him through life, left him on the 
cross, but is to join him once more and reign upon 
the earth in the kingdom of the Millennium. 26 This 
prurient heresy, which Epiphanius compares to the 
two-headed hairy serpent Sepedon, and which could 

26 Euseb. iii. 28. Epiphan. Hceres. xxviii. 



CH. XII.] DOCTRINE AND HERESIES. 107 

be sheep or goat at will, using the Old Testament 
against the New, or the New against the Old, spread 
like a plague in Asia Minor, and awakened the par- 
ticular abhorrence of S. John. 

The Ebionites were probably Jewish Christians, Ebion. 
so called from an affectation of poverty — the word 
Ebion meaning poor — or from a leader of that name : 
either theory being equally probable, and equally 
incapable of proof. 27 To their Judaizing they added 
the theory of Cerinthus. They are somewhat incon- 
sistently described as very strict in morals, and 
decidedly antinomian ; from which it may be in- 
ferred, that their name covered a considerable variety 
of sects. 

Thus the corruption of Judaism mingled with that Error 
of Heathenism, engendering monstrous dreams. The in first 
inspired wisdom of the Apostles dealt little with pnncip ea 
heresy as developed into systems. Writing for all 
time, they combated the evil in its elements, or first 
principles. For the learned curiosity, which delights 
to trace error through all its kaleidoscopic combina- 
tions, they had neither leisure nor inclination. In 
the provision, however, that they made against error, 
we see everywhere the proof of a forethought more 
than human. A rule of faith, brief, simple, com- 
prehensive, stating facts rather than dogmas, and 
stamped on the heart and memory of each individual 
believer ; a discipline and communion, the same 

27 The learned criticism that Wiseman, Wilde, Masterman;*to 
has demolished so many historical which might be added Goode, 
characters, merely because their Golightly, Horsman, and sundry 
names happened to be significant, others in the Tractarian and Pa- 
has been itself demolished by the pal Aggression controversies. See 
exquisite jeu d'esprit of Mr. Ro- Eclipse of Faith. 
gers, on the names of Newman, 



108 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. I. 

Provision everywhere ; and finally, a body of sacred writings, 
enor. easily distinguished from all spurious and apocryphal 
productions, attested from without, and bearing their 
own witness in themselves, were precisely the things 
needed to separate Church doctrine from the chaos 
of loose opinions, with which it might otherwise 
have been hopelessly confounded. The times that 
followed the first century, amply demonstrated the 
wisdom of such threefold provision. As heresy 
organized, it was confronted by a mightier organiza- 
tion, prepared at every point to meet it. As it 
became more methodical, and more moral, imitating 
more closely the tenets and discipline of the Church, 
it was met by a harmony, and unity, beyond its 
imitation. The Church system, in short, was one 
that took in the whole man. It had a spirit and a 
body. It was equally adapted to heart, and mind, 
and soul. On whichever side, therefore, the flood of 
heresy might come in, there was a barrier provided. 
Peculiar- In this respect, the Apostolic Church differs from 
church, all human schools. In it, more than in any rival 
system, order and liberty were able to stand together. 
It did not exclude a variety of standing-points : it 
simply harmonized them. Peter, in following Christ 
by a life of adventurous activity, might not be able 
to comprehend precisely what that other " man" was 
doing,, who sat still and mused ; he might find in 
" brother Paul" some things perplexing to him : but 
Many there was one fellowship, one faith, one baptism, one 
points har- spirit, one body, one hope ; and if there was any 
point in which oneness did not as yet appear, it was 
as easy to distrust one's self, as to distrust God's 
promise. Where there are different men, there are 
differences of perfection, differences of attainment. 



monised. 



CH. XIII.] RITES— OBSERVANCES — MORALS. 109 

The legitimate course, then, is " whereto we have 
attained, to walk by the same rule, to mind the same 
thing." In short, while unity of faith and prac- 
tice was thoroughly provided for in the Apostolic 
system, it was not so provided as to exclude the 
necessity of charity, humility, and patience. To 
" speak the truth in love," or as the original seems Ruthin 
to mean, to " win the truth by love," was to be the 
pervading principle of all genuine orthodoxy. 



CHAPTER XHL 

RITES OBSERVANCES MORALS. 

Four thousand years of preparation for the Church, in ritual 
with the ritual education of the chosen people, left stmction 

needed.. 

little need of instruction in the decencies of Religion. 
That men were to pray in reverent postures, that 
they were to fast at certain times, to celebrate festive 
occasions with suitable marks of joy, to assemble for 
common prayer — in short, to make worship a social, 
and therefore an orderly, uniform, and duly regulated 
thing— was sufficiently understood by Jew and Greek, 
by barbarian, Scythian, bond and free. Our Lord, 
therefore, in His teachings, confined Himself mainly 
to the meaning and spirit of such acts. 1 Leaving the 
Church to clothe herself, from the abundant material 
which ages of devotion had accumulated, in such 
garments of external sanctity as should be found 
most in keeping with her doctrine, He merely set 

1 Matt. vi. 1-18. 



110 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. I. 

an example of preferring simple to complicated 
forms ; of consecrating the obvious and catholic 
elements of nature, rather than symbols of a local, 
national, or purely conventional character. 

Baptism. Baptism, that is, washing with water, a symbol of 
spiritual cleansing common to all religions, He sub- 
stituted for Circumcision, as the rite of initiation, or 
new birth, into the Divine Name and Family. The 
addition of white robes, salt, lights, exorcism, renun- 
ciation, unction, crossing, and other graceful and sig- 
nificant though in the aggregate cumbrous forms, 
probably came in by degrees during the post- Apos- 
tolic period. As in the case of circumcision, the 
performance of this rite was not confined to the 
higher orders of the Ministry. It is possible that it 
was performed for the most part by immersion. Of 
this, however, there is no sufficient proof. 

sSppSr 1 ' 8 r ^ LG Breaking of Bread, in which bread and wine, 
the universal symbols of nourishment and refresh- 
ment, were consecrated as means of spiritual growth, 
was celebrated commonly on the first day of the 
• week, and in strict conformity with the original 
Divine Institution. Apostles and Presbyters were 

The ministers of this sacrament. The Agape, or Love- 
feast, was at first, perhaps, celebrated with it. As 
there was danger, however, of confusion arising from 
this practice, the two were separated ; and the custom 
grew up of having the one in the morning and the 
other in the evening. The Agape, in fact, was not 
merely a symbol of the charity of believers. It 
became in many places an actual daily meal, at 
which the poorer brethren partook of the bounty 
of the rich. It was a memento of that Pentecostal 
season when believers lived as brothers and had all 



CH. XIII.] ' KITES — OBSERVANCES — MORALS. Ill 

things common. It was easily abused, however, and 
finally had to be done away. Like the kindred 
ceremonv, "the kiss of peace," it continued iust The kiss 

i i -i a t u of peace. 

long enough to show that even Apostolic customs 
may be perverted ; that the choicest plants, by 
•neglect, may degenerate into weeds. 

The Laying on of Hands, as a seal of special gifts, The i ay - 
was known to the ancient Patriarchs, who thereby hands. 
confirmed the blessing of the birthright ; was prac- 
ticed by Moses when he ordained Joshua his suc- 
cessor ; and was sanctioned by our Lord for acts of 
healing or of blessing. In all these senses it was 
continued by the Apostles. 2 They laid hands on all 
who had been baptized, — a seal of the spiritual birth- 
right, as well as of such special "gifts" as the Spirit 
dispensed to each. In this respect it has been aptly 
termed a kind of lay-ordination, a setting apart to 
that "kingly priesthood" inherent in all believers. 
It was also the usual rite of ordination proper. Mis- 
sion, also, was given in this way. 3 Being eminently 
a symbol of the kingly office, it was commonly exer- 
cised, in conformity with patriarchal precedent, by 
the highest order of the Ministry : Presbyters, how- 
ever, concurring and taking part. 4 

Unction, a favorite Eastern symbol of the healing unction, 
and joy-inspiring work of the Spirit, is often alluded 
to in the New Testament. It was employed, at 
least by the Jewish Christian Church, in the vis- 
iting of the sick. 5 There is no proof, however, 
that it was during the first century made a part of 

2 Gen. xlviii. 14 ; Numb, xxvii. 3 Acts, xiii. 3. 
20-23; Mark, vii. 32; xvi. 18; 4 1 Tim. iv. 14; 2 Tim. i. 6. 
Acts, viii. 19; Heb. vi. 2. 6 James, v. 14. 



112 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. I. 

ordinary ritual. At a later period it was added both 
to Baptism and to the Laying on of Hands. 

worship. Of the ordinary accessories of public worship, the 
Church inherited from the Temple and Synagogue 
an abundant store of psalms, and hymns, and spiritual 
songs. These, with the Lord's Prayer, with the sim- 
ple baptismal formula of faith, with the solemn cele- 
bration of the Lord's Supper and the Love-feast, with 
readings from the Old Testament and New, with 
exercises of the charismata, and with such special 
prayers as were occasionally prompted by particular 
inspiration, gave sufficient variety of occupation to 
devout hearts and minds. That the inspired and 
rapt utterances of this period melted into air, bene- 
fiting only a single generation, is not altogether 
probable. It is at least possible that the unrivalled 

Liturgy, and inimitable beauty of Liturgic language derived 
its peculiar bloom from Pentecostal times. 6 In every 
age devout feeling can clothe itself in words more or 
less appropriate. It is not in every age, however, 
that it has power to crystallize into imperishable 
gems. This belongs rather to an age of religious 
and poetic inspiration. If we may judge from the 
descriptions of heavenly worship in the Apocalypse, 
or from the peculiar solemnity with which the ante- 
cedents and concomitants of the Institution of the 
Lord's Supper are given in the Gospel of S. John, 
the mind of that great Apostle was eminently litur- 
gical; and to him, probably, we are indebted for 
many of the devout utterances which still resound in 

6 Specimens of liturgic Ian- i. 46, 68 ; ii. 14, 29 ; Acts, iv. 24 ; 
guage are to be found all through Rom. xvi. 24 ; Rev. iv. 8 ; v. 9 ; 
the New Testament: e. g. Luke, xix. 1-1, etc. 



CH. xni.] RITES — OBSERVANCES — MORALS. 113 

all languages from the one end of Christendom to 
the other. 7 

Hours of prayer probably accorded with those in ^° a y e s r of 
use among the Jews, though straitened circumstances 
soon led to nocturnal or " antelucan" meetings. 
Easter and Pentecost, with a Fast of greater or less *f^ 
duration just before Easter, soon came to be ob- 
served. Fasting and prayer preceded ordinations. 
The Lord's Day took the place of the Sabbath, £°rd's 
though the latter continued to be respected by Ori- 
ental Christians. Places of prayer were upper rooms, Places. 
or private houses, given or loaned for the purpose. 
The distinction, however, between the House of God 8 
and private residences was not suffered to be forgotten. 

As questions of propriety or of particular customs Observ- 
arose, the Apostles settled them on general princi- 
ples, and sometimes in accordance with current 
maxims of the day. 9 They were careful to avoid the 
vice of excessive legislation. Virginity they toler- 
ated, and even encouraged ; 10 but always with the 
proviso, that there should be a natural fitness for 
that state. Ascetic observances were in like manner Asceticism 
allowed ; but with a strict understanding, that these 
things should in nowise interfere with liberty of 
conscience. 11 So far was this respect for private 
judgment carried, that S. Paul did not even enforce 
the decree of the Council at Jerusalem, with regard 
to meats offered to idols, 12 as an absolute law. He 
preferred that in all such matters men should judge 
for themselves. 

T See Palmer, Origines Litur- 9 1 Cor. xi. 1-16. 

gicce ; Bunsen's Hippolyttis, last 10 1 Cor. vii. 

vol. ; Thiersch, Apostol. Ch. " Rom. xiv. 

8 1 Cor. xi. 22. 12 1 Cor. x. 18-33. 



114 . HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. I. 

Morals. The morals of the Apostolic Church were framed, 
of course, on the Sermon on the Mount, or on the 
example of the life of Jesus Christ. By the help of 
persecution, and in the freshness of first love, there 
was perhaps a more general approximation to this 
high standard than Christendom has since exhibited. 
A community, however, just rescued from the stews 
of idolatry, and which lived in a moral atmosphere 
reeking with heathen abominations, was subject to 
terrible lapses at times, followed by gusts of passion- 
ate repentance. 33 In such cases delinquents were cut 
off from communion, but not from hope. 14 The 
Christians in Corinth were either worse than in 
other places, or being more tenderly loved by S. 
Paul were more sharply reprehended. In the Jew- 
ish Christian Church, and in many of the Churches 
in Asia Minor, there was a rapid decline. It is to be 
observed, however, that the light which reveals ihe 
faults of that period, is the pure white light of 
uncompromising truth ; and that many of the sins 
into which Christians fell were such as the best 
heathen hardly considered sins at all. What S. Paul 
looked upon as abominable, Cato would have re- 
garded as natural and proper. 

social "With social and political problems the Church did 

not concern itself. Taking the frame- work of society 
as it was, it aimed to introduce into the relations of 
rulers and subjects, fathers and children, husbands 
and wives, masters and slaves, the golden rule of 
charity. This being present, society would regulate 
itself. This being absent, no mechanical re-adjust- 

13 2 Cor. vii. 11. severity; not, as is sometimes 

14 The case of Ananias and Sap- represented, of Church discipline. 
phira was an instance of divine 



problems. 



CH. Xm.] RITES — OBSERVANCES — MORALS. 115 

• 

ment would answer a good purpose. Such absolute 
indifference to political theories in a movement so 
mighty, so deep, so intellectual as Christianity, is 
one of the most remarkable features of its early 
progress. Regarding: each relation of life as a par- ah 

relations 

ticular divine calling, it infused, however, a new ele- hallowed 
ment into each. Celibacy was to be hallowed by 
special devotion to God's service. Marriage was to 
be elevated by embracing it in the spirit of the 
Lord's union with the Church. Masters and slaves, 
as brethren, were to serve one another. High and 
low, rich and poor, bond and free, were all to be re- 
garded as pilgrims in this world, journeying to one 
end, running one race, looking forward to one prize ; 
for the final attainment of which, the worst position 
in life has, in some respects, advantages over the best. 16 

15 1 Cor. vii. 17, 20, 29-31 ; possession of slaves as wholly 

Luke, vi. 20. The Therapeutce, contrary to nature," and lived on 

according to Philo Judseus, on terms of mutual equality in all • 

the ground that " nature has ere- things. Menial offices were per- 

ated all men free," regarded " the formed by them in turns. 



BOOK II. 



AGE OF MAETYES AND DOCTOES 



THE DEATH OF S. JOHN 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ALEXANDRINE SCHOOL. 



A. D. 100-232 



BOOK II. 
CHAPTEE I. 

BEGINNING OF THE SECOND CENTURY. 

In the history of the Church, as indeed in all 
history, there are from time to time certain half 
hours, as it were, of silence in heaven; certain 
seasons of unpretending but fruitful preparation for 
the opening of the seals of a new order of events. 

Such a season occurred during the latter end of ^St 1 
the first century and the beginning of the second, growth. 
when S. John either in person or in spirit was still 
presiding over the Churches of Asia Minor. As 
compared with the outgoing vigor of the Pentecostal 
age, it was an interval of silence, — of quiet and ob- 
scure, though indefatigable industry in carrying on 
the work previously begun. Though much was 
done and much suffered, little was originated during 
this period. Concentration, not expansion, was the 
order of the day. Few enterprises were undertaken, 
few brilliant minds arose. The mighty leaders of 
the Pentecostal age had, with one or two exceptions, 
departed to their rest; and those who came into 
their place, being well content to labor upon other 
men's foundations, and in their doctrine having little 



120 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. II. 

need or wish to depart from the exact words of 
Apostolic teaching, left but scanty traces of their 
lives for history to record. 
The seed Christianity, indeed, presented snch a picture at 

growing , . . J , r r 

m secret, this tune, as that suggested by our Lord in one of 
the most striking and mysterious of His parables of 
the Kingdom. The soil of heathenism having been 
duly broken up, and the seed cast in, the great 
Sower had gone his way, and was slumbering, as it 
were : the seed, the meanwhile, springing and grow- 
ing up, no one noticed how. Or, its general appear- 
ance might be likened to the quiet but steady pro- 

The Tem- cess f the finishing of the Temple. The stones and 

pie rising ° ■»- 

in silence, timbers of the spiritual edifice had been hewn and 
shaped, each for its own appointed place, by inspired 
Master-builders. What remained for those immedi- 
ately coming after was with noiseless industry to go 
on in the line made ready to their hands, and to carry 
out the plan which had been divinely set before 
them. 

ing speii!" I* was > m snort ? a kind of breathing spell between 
two periods of extraordinary energy and activity in 
the Church. The sun had set upon a great and busy 
day of missionary zeal ; it was destined soon to rise 
upon an equally busy day of polemical excitement. 
In the interval between there is a veil upon the 
Churches ; under which, as we learn from the re- 
sults, there was a vigorous life working, but through 
which it is impossible to discern aught, save here 
and there the figure of a Watchman or a Witness : a 
mere token to posterity that the remarkable stillness 
of the period was not of death, but of growth. 

S. John departed to his rest about the beginning 
of the century ; S. Clement of Kome, and S. Symeon, 



CH. I.] BEGINNING OF THE SECOND CENTURY. 121 

the second Bishop of Jerusalem., a little while later, s. John 
In the great Pro vine e of Syria, S. Ignatius kept alive witnesses. 
the teaching, and exercised " the gift," which more 
than thirty years previously he had received from 
the three chief Apostles. In Asia Minor, S. Poly- 
carp was treasuring the sacred lore which sixty 
years afterwards he transmitted to a new era of the 
Church. So, in other parts, a few witnesses remain- 
ed to testify of the wonders of Apostolic times. 1 Am- 
mias and Quadratus were reverenced as Prophets. 
Others were still known for evangelic gifts. There Evangei- 
were doubtless others also, such as Papias the Mil- Prophets, 
lenarian, who corrupted the tradition they had re- 
ceived from the Apostles, and fostered a secret 
undergrowth of superstition and false doctrine. 

The profligate Domitian, whose name is connected Domitian. 

- 1 - ~ 7 Iserva. 

with the second of the general Persecutions, — whose A - D - 9S - 
rage, however, spent itself indifferently upon Jews, 
philosophers, and every one that had a claim to any 
sort of merit, — was succeeded by !N"erva; and he 
towards the end of the first century by the virtuous 
Trajan. 

The latter was induced by his reverence, real or Trajan, 
pretended, for the gods of the Empire, to give ear to 
the vile calumnies which continued to be circulated 
against his Christian subjects, and to indulge, if not 
to foster, the spirit of persecution. The secrecy ™ipfr- n " 
forced upon believers by the frivolity as well as secution - 
cruelty of the world around, afforded undoubtedly a 
handle against them. What innocence wore for a 
veil, might easily be assumed as a mask for guilt. 
Few heathen magistrates would distinguish be- 

1 Euseb. Ecc. Hist. iii. 37-39. 



Secret 
societies. 



104-110. 



122 HISTORY OP THE CHURCH. [bK. II. 

tween the holy rites of the Gospel, and the foul 
abominations of Gnostic sects, when both were 
covered over with the same impenetrable clond. 2 
Trajan seems to have taken no pains to inquire into 
the distinction. By renewing certain edicts, almost 
become obsolete, against secret societies and assem- 
blies, he gave full scope to the rage of the rabble ; 3 
so that wherever Christians came together for wor- 
ship, they were liable to be seized, put to the torture, 
and summarily condemned, as enemies of the state 
and despisers of the majesty of the emperor, 
piiny the It was under these circumstances that Pliny the 

Younsrcr 

d. ' Younger, 4 being appointed Governor of Bithynia, a 
province evangelized in Apostolic times, undertook 
for a while to carry out the law in all its rigor. He 
became convinced, however, that the task he had as- 
sumed was beyond his strength. To put all the 
Christians to death was to run a risk of depopulat- 
ing large portions of his province. He found, more- 
over, that the veil of secrecy in which the Christians 
enshrouded their sacred rites, covered nothing capa- 
ble of a criminal construction. The temples of the 
gods, indeed, were beginning to be deserted, and vic- 
tims had almost ceased to be offered upon their 

2 On the state of the Roman Testimonies, and Gierig's edition 
law with regard to persecution, of Pliny the Younger (torn. ii. 
see Jeremie, Hist, of the Christian 498-519); also, Gieseler, § 33, n. 
Church, ch. ii., and notes ; also, *7. Pliny's questions to the Era- 
ch. i., § 8. peror were (1) whether any dis- 

3 Eusebius attributes this per- tinction of sex, age, etc., should 
secution to popular fury. History, be made; (2) whether place of 
lib. iii. 32. penitence should be allowed ; (3) 

4 The genuineness of these let- whether the mere name of Chris- 
ters of Pliny has been disputed, tian should be punished, or some 
but is admitted by the great ma- crime should be proven ; (4) 
jority of learned writers. See whether any search was to be 
Lardner's Jewish and Heathen made for them. 



CH, I.] BEGINNING OF THE SECOND CENTUKY. 123 



of 
heathen 



altars. Christianity was becoming the prevalent re- Decay 
ligion. 5 But as to its votaries, Pliny, on diligent in- worship, 
cjrdry, having examined certain apostates who volun- 
teered their evidence, and having put to the torture 
two deaconesses, 6 could learn nothing against them, 
except, as he expressed it, their perverse and extrava- 
gant superstition. They meet before sunrise, he 
writes, on a certain day. They sing hymns respon- 
sively to one another in praise of Christ as God. 7 
They bind themselves together by a sacrament / not, 
however, for any criminal purpose, but as a mutual 
pledge against theft, adultery, breach of trust, and 
the like : all which beins; ended, they break up for christian 

° -ip worship. 

a while, and afterwards reassemble for a sociable 
and innocent repast. 

So Pliny wrote to the Emperor, — an accurate, Term 
though somewhat meagre outline of Christian life and 
worship. The term sacvamentum, which he employs 
to designate the chief act of communion, is a word 
of large meaning, covering any thing from a simple 
verbal oath, in the modern sense, to the most elabo- 
rate and impressive ceremonial. Pliny's account, 
therefore, drawn as it was from the reluctant confes- 
sions of persons under torture, though correct as to 
the general order of Church customs in his day, is 
of very little value with regard to particulars. These 
were probably concealed ; or, if they were divulged, 
Pliny was not a man to think them worth mention- 
ing in a formal communication to the Emperor. 

For the rest, the candid and philosophic governor 

B Lucian, Pseudomant. 25, rep- 6 " Ex duabus ancillis quae min- 

resents the false prophet as com- istrce dicebantur." 

plaining that " Pontus was full of 7 " Carmenque Christo quasi 

atheists and Christians." deo dicere secum invicem." 



124 HISTOEY OF THE CHUECH. [bk.-II. 

d °° d nh " ^ ree V bore witness to the general good conduct of 

christians, the persecuted sect, and to their peaceable behavior. 8 
The vigorous measures, however, which he had pur- 
sued against them, were not without effect. Many, 
under the pressure of persecution, dissembled their 
belief. The assemblies for worship were less fre- 
quently held, x>r more carefully concealed. The 
heathen gods began once more to be honored by 
obsequious crowds. 9 On the other hand, the Em- 
peror, somewhat mollified by the representations of 
Pliny, allowed the persecution to assume a milder 

reienS. form. None should be punished, he decreed, but 
those regularly convicted ; anonymous accusations 
should be rejected ; those who were brought to trial 
by responsible accusers, might be allowed to clear 
themselves by worshipping the gods ; but for such 
as remained quiet, there should be no rigorous in- 
quiry. 

Believers The effect of tliis decree was to blunt somewhat 

still 

molested, the edge of persecution. But when such a man as 
Pliny could regard the conscientious firmness of 
believers as an offence worthy of the rack, and when 
such an emperor as Trajan could sanction capital pun- 
ishment in cases which he deemed undeserving of 
serious inquiry, 10 there could be no lack of informers 
on the one hand, or of unjust judges on the other, to 

8 This testimony was the more 10 Terttillian vehemently cen- 
reliable from the fact, that it was snres the Emperor on this ac- 
drawn in part from persons who count : Apologet. ii. Mosheim 
had apostatized" some three years, apologizes for Trajan, hut the 
and one or two tioenty years be- defence is an extremely lame one ; 
fore." attributing- his " inconsistency" to 

9 Pliny inferred from this, that fear of " the priests and the mul- 
a great number of Christians titude," and not to " superstition." 
might be won over from their Comment, vol. i. 8, etc. Neander 
faith, if " place of repentance" defends him on somewhat better 
were given. grounds. 



CH. I.] BEGINNING OF THE SECOND CENTURY. 125 

procure accusations and convictions, and to keep the 
sword continually suspended over the heads of at 
least the chief leaders of the Church. Many suffered 
at the hands of the populace. Some were put to 
death by the order of Trajan himself. Among %™™*' 
others, Symeon the second Bishop of Jerusalem has ^ ab D out) 
been already mentioned. His successor, Justus, lo7 - 
likewise obtained the martyr's crown. 

But the flower of the noble army of witnesses for Ignatius 
Christ at this period was found in the person of S. 
Ignatius, surnamed Theophorus, the Apostolic Bishop ' 
of the Church of Antioch. 11 He was a well-known 
disciple of the Apostle S. John. Associated for 
a while with S. Euodius, whom he succeeded in the 
year sixty-eight, and holding the Mother See of the 
Church in Syria, he was virtually the head, or, as S. 
Chrysostom styles him, the Apostle of that important 
province. As such he became a shining mark for 
the arrows of persecution. 

The precise time of his martyrdom has been^much Before 
disputed, some placing it in the ninth, others in the A.^ne. 
nineteenth year of the reign of Trajan. It is only 
known, that Trajan, elated with his victories over 
the Scythians and Dacians, and about to engage in 
an expedition in the East, halted at Antioch on 
his way and showed a disposition to afflict the 
Christians. The Bishop, with a noble anxiety to 
shield his flock, fearlessly repaired to the imperial 
presence. Trajan said to him : " "What cacodsemon 
(that is, ill-starred wretch) art thou, engaged in per- 
verting other people ?" Ignatius answered : " None 
can call Theophorus cacodsemon, for the daemons Theopho- 

x . ' rus. 

11 S. Clement. Rom., S. Ignat., S. Polycarp., Patrum Apostol., etc. 
Oxon. 1838. 



126 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. H. 

keep away from the servants of God. But if thou 
eallest me cacodaemon because I am hostile to the 
•* daemons, I confess it. Having Christ the King of 
Heaven on my side, I dispel their snares." Trajan 
said : " What is the meaning of Theophorus V Igna- 
tius replied : " One who bears Christ in his heart." 
" But," said the Emperor, " do not we in that sense 
bear the Gods, who fight with us against our ene- 
mies ?" Ignatius answered : " The daemons of the 
Gentiles are no gods. There is but one God, who 
made heaven, and the earth, and the sea, and all that 
is therein ; and one Christ Jesus, His only begotten 
Son, whose kingdom may I attain !" The sentence 
His t of death soon followed : " We command Ignatius 

sentence. o 

who says he bears about the Crucified with him, to 
be conducted to Rome by a military guard ; there to 
be thrown to wild beasts as a spectacle for the 
people." 
His -That the fact of his punishment might be as widely 

know^h as the noble victim himself, he was taken to 
the city by the longest way. The result was very 
different from what the Emperor probably intended. 
It enabled the Martyr to give an example of faith 
and courage much needed at that time for the feebler 
class of believers. 12 Every where met by troops of 
zealous friends, he vindicated his claim to the title 
Theophorus, and to his own noble maxim, " My love 

13 The " fears" of Ignatius for doubt, to nerve the faith and 
his flock were probably not a courage of the more timid crowd, 
mere dread of the sufferings they This being considered, the eager- 
might have to undergo, "but an ness for martyrdom displayed by 
anxiety lest they should fall this noble confessor is defensible 
For all Christians were on rational grounds. When Poly- 



journey, 



not equally courageous. Such carp suffered, a half century later, 
occasional examples as that of circumstances were different and 
Ignatius were necessary, no a different course was advisable. 



CH. I.] BEGINNING OF THE SECOND CENTURY. 127 

hath been crucified." A Divine influence accom- 
panied him from city to city. In his person the 
Cross seemed to be again uplifted. Everywhere he 
took care to season his conversation with salt, writ- 
ing epistles to the Churches, dropping words of 
hope and comfort upon the multitudes who thronged 
to see him, calling his chains his spiritual jewels, 
and enlivening the gravity of his discourses with a 
chaste vivacity peculiarly his own. In this latter 
respect, S. Ignatius was among the sprightliest as 
well as holiest of martyrs. From his adamantine 
soul, as the Greeks describe it, the waters of an 
almost playful fancy were continually welling up. 
His military guard he compard to "ten leopards," ffissaiues. 
which the kinder he was to them became only the 
more wanton. The jaws of the lions which awaited 
him in the Roman Amphitheatre he regarded as a 
mill which was to grind his wheat into an offering 
of fine flour unto the Lord. With sallies of this 
kind, with stirring exhortations, with grave advice, 
and with a face which the ancients describe as radi- 
ant with joy, he made his journey to the great 
Metropolis a genuine Christian ovation. 

He was thrown to the lions in the Roman Amphi- Final 
theatre on the great popular Feast of the Saturnalia. 
The whole city flocked together on such occasions. 
It was providentially ordered, therefore, that when 
the courageous old man descended into the arena, he 
was, more conspicuously than any of the martyrs 
before or after him, " a spectacle unto the whole 
world, even to angels and to men." Long before his 
arrival at Rome, he had had the consolation of learn- 
ing that his Church, which he had committed to 



128 



HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. 



[be:, ii. 



His 

remains. 



the special charge of his friend Polycarp, was no 
longer subject to persecution. 

Of his body, torn and mangled by the lions, a few 
relics are said to have been collected by the diligence 
of his friends. 13 The nobler legacy that he left to 
posterity in his famous Epistles, has been more se- 
verely handled. In such portions, however, as have 
survived the fury of a long and searching contro- 
versy, 14 whether we take the seven Epistles commonly 



13 In his Epistle to the Romans, 
he expresses a hope that nothing 
might be left to be a trouble to 
his friends : that he might disap- 
pear to the world to appear with 
Christ: that he might set to the 
world to rise with Christ. 

14 The asperity of certain critics 
towards this father does not seem 
to have abated, if one may judge 
from two recent examples. The 
first is Bunsen. The word Sige, 
it appears — a Valentinian Gnostic 
term for God — in the Epistle to 
the Trallians, was for a long while 
considered an anachronism, and 
was used as an argument agaiast 
the genuineness of the Epistle. 
The recent discovery of the works 
of Hippolytus has proved that the 
term was used by Simon Ma- 
gus: the anachronism and the ar- 
gument, therefore, fall to the 
ground. Bunsen is forced to 
acknowledge this ; but instead 
of candidly confessing the error, 
he turns upon Bishop Pearson 
for contending (as he had a right 
to do before the recent discover- 
ies) that Ignatius used the word 
in the ordinary sense, and not in 
the Gnostic : see B.'s Hippol. vol. 
i. p. 59. The second instance is 
Dr. Schaff. The latter acknowl- 
edges the genuineness of the 
seven Epistles; but, wishing to 



find fault somewhere, accuses the 
noble martyr of "something of- 
fensive" because he exhorts his 
friend Polycarp to be "more stu- 
dious, . . . more zealous, . . . and 
to flee the arts of the Devil" Dr. 
Schaff . forgets that mutual ex- 
hortation was by early Christ- 
iana considered a duty, and that 
Bishops were as willing to be 
warned against "the arts of the 
devil" as the humblest catechu- 
men. In the same way, the mar- 
tyr's earnestly expressed wish 
that the Romans would not seek 
to save him from martyrdom, but 
would rather pray for him that 
he might be found a sacrifice to 
God, is set down as " boisterous 
impatience and morbid fanati- 
cism." That the prospect of 
being eaten by lions may have 
had a stimulating effect upon the 
holy Bishop's imagination, and 
that he may have expressed his 
willingness to suffer somewhat 
more warmly than if he had 
written quietly in his study, 
I can readily conceive. But 
to characterize this generous 
warmth as " boisterous impa- 
tience and morbid fanaticism" 
is to war against every noble 
impulse of the human heart. 
Writings more free than the 
Ignatian Epistles from fanati- 



CH. I.] BEGINNING OF THE SECOND CENTURY. 129 

received, or the briefer fragments of the Syriac trans- 
lation, there are unmistakable marks of his character 
and genius. Their freshness and originality is such 
as we find in no other of the Apostolic fathers. The 
style is terse, sparkling, and sententious. With allu- 
sions everywhere to the sense of Holy Scripture, 
but with few literal quotations, and possessing to a 
remarkable degree that quickness of spiritual discern- 
ment which hearkens, as he happily expresses it, to 
the silence of Jesus, Ignatius wrote with a soul still 
moist with the morning dew of the first outpouring 
of the Spirit. Between the age of inspiration and His 

r> n • • ii i • i Position. 

the era of reflective and discursive thought which 
marked the latter half of the century, he is one of 
the most valuable of the connecting links. 

The testimony he bore to the doctrine and disci- His 
pline of his times is found in all copies of his writ- Doctrine 
ings, and is therefore not affected by the critical Discipline, 
objections which have been made to portions of the 
text. On the subject of Episcopacy his language 
is decisive. The proper Divinity of the Son of God, 
the reality of the Incarnation, and the anti-Gnostic 
maxim that even things done in the body are spirit- 
ual if done in the Lord, are expressed with equal 
force and precision. The hortatory parts of the 
Epistles reveal a state of things in the Churches 
differing little from what existed when Timothy 
received his instructions from S. Paul. The widows 
.continued to be the special charge of the chief 

Pastor. Masters and slaves, husbands and wives, 

• 

cism, and from every other kind in favor of the Seven Epistles, see 

of bitterness, can nowhere be Prof. Blunt's Lectures on the Ilis- 

fonnd. See Antient Syriac Vet- iory of the First Three Centuries; 

sion, etc., by W. Cureton, M. A. also Dr. Schaff's History of the 

For a summary of the argument Church. 
6* 



130 HISTOEY OF THE CHUECH. [BK. n. 

are to grow in grace by faithful performance of their 
duties to one another. Marriage is honored ; vir- 
ginity is moderately commended. 15 "With the excep- 
tion, in short, of a brief and obscure allusion to 
Satan's supposed ignorance of some of the mysteries 
of the Incarnation, every thing in these writings is 
indicative of an age of simple faith, averse to specu- 
lation, averse to innovation, and jealously conserva- 
tive of truth and order, in the letter and spirit of 
them both. 
two With the remarkable witness of Pliny, and Igna- 

wltnesses. J ' o 

tius, — the one a heathen philosopher, the other a 
Christian Bishop, but both testifying to the vigor 
of Christianity at this comparatively unrecorded 
period of its history, — we pass with rapid steps to 
an epoch which more completely lifts the veil of 
obscurity and silence, opening the seals of a new 
era of Church life, and showing the seeds of good 
and evil, which had been springing the meanwhile, 
in the full luxuriance of their growth. 



CHAPTER II. 

HADRIAN AND THE ANTONINES. 

Fourth The ablest and wisest Emperors were not by any 

Persecu- ± , . 

ii 7-i38 °* means the mos t favorable to Christianity. Trajan is 
known in history as the third of the Persecutors. 

15 The much abused phrase, of all engagements — virginity and 

Nothing without the Bishop, is marriage — young persons should 

used chiefly in this connection ; not think themselves wiser than 

namely, that in undertaking the tlieir Pastors. S. Ignatii Ep. ad 

two most critical, and momentous Polycarp. 5. 



CH. n.] HADRIAN AND THE ANTONINES. 131 

Under Hadrian his successor, a philosophic prince 
of varied talents and virtues, whose virtue, how- 
ever, seems to have possessed him as a spirit of 
unrest, things were but little altered for the better. 
Persecution was continually breaking out in one 
place or another. But the severity with which it 
was conducted depended mainly upon the temper of 
the mob, and the greater or less zeal of the provincial 
magistrates. 

It is of little use to look for recondite reasons for Progress 
the injustice, or indifference, of these politically wise Gospel. 
Emperors towards their Christian subjects. The 
Church undoubtedly was becoming a great power. 
It was felt, moreover, to be a power of change. 
The more thoughtful magistrates, in proportion as 
they were patriotic and religious in the heathen 
sense, were nervously alive to the importance of this 
fact; and of course the more alive, as Christianity 
was to them an incomprehensible, and, some of 
them half suspected, an irrepressible phenomenon. 
Yet they were by no means settled in their judg- Gradual, 
ment, or consistent in their course. As a man, 
about to be overtaken by the flow of a great tide, 
first notices with indifference a pool here or there 
forming stealthily in the sands, but, at last, when he 
sees the pools enlarging and rapidly multiplying, is 
awakened to his danger, and now advances, now 
retreats, the hostile element confronting him which- 
ever way he turns : such was the position, and such 
the policy of the magistrates of the Empire, in deal- 
ing with Christianity. Mere superstitions they could A r s ^. th 
easily have tolerated with Roman magnanimity. 
But Christianity, they saw, was no common super- 
stition. 'Not was it a violent enthusiasm, sweeping 



132 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. II. 

with foaming and threatening front along a measur- 
able channel. What was infinitely more perplexing, 
it was singularly quiet, singularly peaceable, singu- 
larly gradual in its advance. It came in as a 

as a tide, growth : it rose as a Solway tide. 1 Indeed, so uni- 
form was its progress in all parts of the Roman 
world, so simultaneous in places far remote from one 
another, that whether it was rising upon society, or 
society was sinking into it, was a question that the 
philosophy of the times found it difficult to answer. 
There were many who looked upon it therefore as a 
sort of mysterious epidemic. And it was this mys- 
tery, in fact, this evidence of power without any of 
the pomp and circumstance of power, that baffled the 
counsels of the Emperors, and entangled them in a 
policy as futile as it was unjust. 

inordinate It is true, however, that there were Christians who 
gave needless offence, by the display of an inordinate 
desire of martyrdom. When Arrius Antoninus, 2 pro- 
bably about this period, opened his tribunal in Asia 
for accusations against them, they voluntarily came 
forward in such numbers, that the governor, veiling 
his humanity under an appearance of contempt, was 
forced to drive them away. There are ropes enough, 

1 The steady increase of Chris- every sex, age, condition, and 
tians in all ranks of society was a now even every rank is going 1 
common talk among the heathen ; over to this sect." Apolotjct. i. 
and the somewhat exaggerated For numerous references to pas- 
expressions of the Apologists to sages bearing on this subject sec 
that effect are often put in the Oxf. Translation of Tertnll. p. 3, 
mouths of the enemies of the Gos- note g. 

pel. Thus Tertullian : " Men cry 2 Tertull. ad Scop. 5. There 

out that the state is beset, that would seem to have been two of 

the Christians are in their fields, the name of Arrius ; the one un- 

in their forts, in their islands, der Hadrian, the other in the times 

They mourn, as for a loss, that of Commodus, 



seal 



CH. II.] HADRIAN AND THE ANTONINES. 133 

said lie, to hang yourselves with, if life is such a bur- 
den to you. 

But such displays on the part of a certain class, Fanaticism 

n -i • • i«« general. 

were symptoms of a distemper which, at this time, 
pervaded all orders of men, and, in a measure, all 
forms of religion. The decay of Heathenism was fill- 
ins; the world with wild dreams. Fanaticism abound- 
ed. The Carpocratians and other Gnostic or semi- 
heathen sects, made their meetings the scenes of 
abominable orgies. The Jews were in a ferment of The Jews, 
religious wars. They had rejected their true Messiah ; 
but the vision of a Messiah, ever present to their 
minds, had become a great stone, as it were, that was 
perpetually falling on them and grinding them to 
powder. Under Trajan, they had perpetrated a hor- a. d. 115, 
rible massacre of the Gentiles in Egypt. Similar 
events t had occurred in Libya, Cyrenaica, Cyprus, 
Palestine and Mesopotamia. Under Hadrian, Bar 
Cochba claimed to be the Messiah, and furiously 
persecuted the Christians. In this rebellion, which 
terminated, as we have seen, 3 with the second over- *• D - 135- 
throw of Jerusalem, more than six hundred thousand 
Jews are said to have perished ; and by famine and 
other evils that followed, Judsea was almost depop- 
ulated. There was similar excitement among the 
heathen. The Egyptians were running frantic over The 
the supposed discovery of their bull-god, Apis. 4 Mag- 
ical arts began to be revived ; and to these, and even 
viler superstitions, the philosophic Emperor fell an 
easy victim. The worship that he instituted to his 
deified minion Antinous made him an object of con- 
tempt to the very heathen. 

3 Book i. ch. vii. See Euseb. 4 Spartianus de Api ; Euseb. de 
Eccles. Hist. iii. 2, 6. Pr a par at. ii. 11. 



134 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bK. n. 

It is not to be wondered at, therefore, if the Chris- 
tians, partly from being somewhat infected with the 
evil spirit of the times, partly from being confounded 
with wretches who assumed the Name of Christ to 
profane it, and partly from a new edge being given 
to the malignity both of Jews and Heathen, suffered 
in many ways not intended by the laws, and became 
more than ever the objects of popular violence. In 
Faith, the Martyrologies, 5 it is said that Faith, Hope and 
charity. Charity were among the sufferers of this time, being 
put to death at Rome, along with Wisdom, their 
mother. These holy sisters, the martyrs of every age, 
had doubtless begun to suffer then. Besides them, 
however, there seem to have been victims of a more 
tangible description, in Italy, Sardinia, Greece, Pal- 
estine, and all the provinces of the East. 6 
Quadratus It was during Hadrian's reign that Quadratus, 
and" s< u ' Bishop of Athens,' wrote an Apology for the Chris- 
s ° p ' tians, and presented it to the Emperor. He was a 
disciple of the Apostles (many of whose miracles he 
. had seen with his own eyes), and a distinguished Evan- 
gelist and Prophet. Becoming Bishop of Athens, 
he labored with great success in reestablishing the 
Church, which, in that part of Greece, had fallen into 
decay. Hadrian, visiting the city in the course of 
his endless travels, was equally intent upon reviving 
heathenism. 8 He seems, however, to have treated 

6 Martyrolog. Roman. August, i. Most modern writers take the 

6 The number of Martyrs at va- mean between these — a process 

rious periods, is a subject that has more easy than satisfactory, 

been much discussed, to little or 7 Euseb. iv. 3 ; lii. 37. 

no purpose. The extremes (i. e., 8 He was there initiated into the 

the reasonable extremes) are re- Eleusinian Mysteries. Hadrian's 

presented by Dodwell, Disertat. active mind being superstitious, as 

Cyprian, xi., and Ruinart., Acta well as philosophic, I can see no 

Martyr. Selecta et Sincera : Pre fat. improbability in the story of Lam- 



Hadrian 
in Athens. 



CH. n.] HADRIAN AND THE ANTONINES. 135 

tlie venerable Apologist with all due respect. The 
memorial presented by Quadratus on this occasion, 
and a similar discourse written by Aristides a con- Aristides. 
verted philosopher, were highly esteemed by the 
Christians, and are said to have had some effect 
upon the mind of the Emperor. 

A greater effect was produced by a letter from Edict 
Serenius Granianus, Proconsul of Asia Minor, rep- informers, 
resenting to the Emperor the injustice of allowing 
Christians to be put to death on a mere popular out- 
cry. Other governors had made similar complaints. 
Hadrian replied by a famous letter to Minucius Fun- 
danus, 9 successor of Granianus, in which he forbids 
any one to be put to death, except in due course of 
law, and orders that false accusers should be rigor- 
ously judged and punished. 

Antoninus Pius, Hadrian's successor, is said to have Antoninus 

PlUS A. D. 

renewed this favorable edict, and seems to have done i38-i6i. * 
his utmost to have it honestly enforced. He was 
moved to this by his own humane disposition, and 
possibly by an apology of Justin, the philosopher 
and martyr. Beyond occasional outbreaks of fan- 
aticism, therefore, in consequence of a long series of 
public calamities, 10 the Christians were little troubled 
in the exercise of their religion. Indeed, the suffer- 
ings they were called to endure were hardly more 
than were necessary to draw a line betwixt them 
and the Gnostic sects ; the latter, as a general rule, 

pridius, ( Alex. Severus, xxiv.,) that priests opposed to it, his rever- 
se erected some temples without ence for the established religion 
fitntuf.fi, with a view to admit Christ (Spartian. Vit. Hadrian, xxii.) 
among- the Roman gods. The same made him desist, 
feeling that induced the Athenians y Euseb. Ecclea. Hist. iv. 9. 
to have an altar to " the unknown 10 Famines, inundations, earth- 
God," may have suggested such a quakes, fires. Jul. Capitolin., Vita 
course ; but when he found the Antonin. Pii, ix. 



136 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. H. 

not caring enough for the Name of Christ to bear 
persecution for it. 

AurSius Marcus Anrelius Antoninus was, as Gibbon has de- 

i6i D i8o scribed him, ." of a severer and more laborious kind 
of virtue" than his amiable predecessor. " He em- 
braced the rigid system of the stoics, which taught 
him to submit his body to his mind, his passions to 
his reason ; to consider virtue as the only good, vice 
as the only evil, all things external as things indif- 
ferent." To his subjects in general, he was just and 
beneficent. But, unfortunately for the peace of the 
Christians, their religion was particularly offensive 

Hostile to to Stoic pride. The imperial sophist might declaim 
of the happy frame of mind which enables one to 
await annihilation with a stern composure. A Chris- 
• tian would merely pity such rigidity of soul. Man 
is not made for a leaden and passionless immobility : 
he is benevolently created for life and hope. Not 
suppression of the affections, but their proper culti- 
vation, is the rule of duty. Not annihilation, but a 
blissful resurrection, — not death, but life, — is the doc- 
trine to inspire true courage, true patience, true tem- 
perance, true virtue of every kind. 

The stoic Marcus Anrelius felt this antagonism between his 
own philosophy and the faith of his Christian sub- 
jects. 11 " It is admirable," says he, "that the soul 
should be prepared for whatever may await her : to 

J1 Neander(C7/. Hist, i., ii.) calls been terribly galled at times by 

attention to a " child-like piety," the artificial stoicism in which he 

which the Emperor had imbibed had tried to encase it ; and the 

from his mother, and which some- irritation thence arising may ac- 

times led him to the expression count for his peculiar hostility to 

of the noblest sentiments, and the Christians. To hate a tiling 

sometimes involved him in abject cordially, there must be a certain 

superstition. A strong religious amount of sympathy with it. 
feeling of this kind must have 



ideal 



CH. II.] HADRIAN AND THE ANTONINES. 137 

be extinguished, to be dispersed, or whatever else may 
happen. But prepared, I say, not with mere obstin- 
acy, like that of the Christians, not with an idle show 
of joy, but in a grave, considerate, reasonable man- 
ner, so as to make a serious impression on the minds 
of other people." Judging Christian hope from the 
stand-point of stoicism, he considered it a mere 
affectation. Besides this, the Gospel, as he could 
not fail to see, imparted a peculiar power. Under 
its inspiration, not the perfect man merely, not the 
king in the stoic sense, but women and children, 
and even slaves, could face the great terror undis- 
mayed. In this respect, philosophy had begun to 
feel itself rebuked. About the time of the Emper- 
or's accession, a hardened wretch of the name of 
Peregrinus, 12 who in the course of a bad life had 
been successively parricide, Christian, priest, con- 
fessor, and finally an apostate from the faith and a 
professor of Cynicism, attempted to prop the failing The cynic 
credit of philosophy by burning himself publicly at mai yr ' 
the Olympic games. An immense crowd was pres- • 
ent. Some laughed, some admired. Contrary, per- 
haps, to the expectation of Peregrinus, none had the 
humanity to interfere. After many delays and tre- 
mors, he threw himself at length into the devouring 
element. The act was indeed but a vile caricature 
of Christian self-devotion. It shows a point, how- 
ever, in which philosophy felt its own deficiency. 
"Where Stoicism could boast of an occasional suicide, 
Christianity could point to an unfailing succession 
of Martyrs. This being the case, there was no 
course left for a«man of discernment like the Em- 

12 Lucian de morte Peregrini. 



138 HISTOKY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. n. • 

peror, but either to embrace . the Gospel, or to treat 
it as an enthusiasm dangerous to the peace of his 
subjects, and to the welfare of the State. 
?y"es e of Among the numerous sufferers of this reign there 
the age. are three names so distinguished, and so typical of 
certain phases of the Church life of the age, as to 
demand for each a separate and particular account, 
poiycarp. Polycarp, the disciple of John, the bosom friend 
of Ignatius, and for threescore years the trusted 
depository of Apostolic tradition, is the representa- 
tive of an age of simple faith, observant of the old 
land-marks, but not much exercised as yet by " the 
oppositions of science," whether true or false. In 
rothinus. Pothinus, a disciple of the same school, and in his 
companions the Lyonnese Martyrs, we observe the 
same devout faith, but with it all the symptoms of 
an age of sterner and more complicated trials. The 
war against heathenism from without, is accompa- 
nied by a protest against the beginnings of heathen- 
Martyr i sn corruptions from within. Justin, the Philoso- 
pher Apologist and Martyr, more fully represents 
this struggle, both outward and inward, as leaving 
the high ground of simple martyrdom, and descend- 
ing into the dusty arena of philosophical, skeptical, 
and critical discussion. 
Transition A 11C [ this was a necessary stage in the Church's 

Peil0d - 1 A T • ■ P'l 

progress here on earth. A religion which fails to 
satisfy the mind of man can never rise above the level 
of a popular superstition. The Church for awhile 
might be content to announce her message in the 
simple, pregnant phrases, which appeal only to the 
few that have ears to hear. But this would not 
answer always. As S. Ignatius foresaw, on his way 
to martyrdom, other times were coming, with a 



CH. m.] S. POLYCARP. 139 

demand for combatants who could speak face to face 
with all kinds of men ; who, as skilful pilots, should 
be in readiness for winds from all quarters of the 
heavens ; who, as athletes thoroughly trained, could 
stand like an anvil under repeated blows, knowing 
that to be smitten is as needful for the victory as the 
power to smite. 13 In proportion as we appreciate 
this truth we are prepared to do justice to three 
phases of Church life, which appeared successively, 
or rather grew one out of another, before the end of 
the second century. An age of simple witness bears Three 
within it an age of elaborate Apologetics ; and this ages ' 
again developes into a confused and troublous era of 
religious discussion and polemical zeal. 

As types of three aspects of this period of transition, 
the names of Polycarp, Pothinus and Justin Martyr 
are entitled to the large place they hold in the early 
history of the Church. 



CHAPTEK ni. 

S. POLYCARP. 



The city of Smyrna, at the beginning of the second church in 
century, was hardly inferior to Ephesus in social and 
political importance. The Church established there 
at quite an early period had remained, as we infer 
from the Apocalypse, singularly uncorrupt; its 
Angel, rich in good works amid temporal poverty 
and affliction, having guarded it successfully against 

13 S. Ig-nat. ad Polycarp. 2, 3. 



140 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bK. II. 

the arts of that semi-Jewish, semi-Gnostic philos- 
ophy, with which the Asiatic cities at that time, 
and for some while after, were more or less in- 
fected. 1 

Poiycarp. "Whether the Angel thus commended was the ad- 
mirable Bishop subsequently so well known under 
the name of Poiycarp, is matter of conjecture only. 2 
Certain it is, however, that the saintly Bishop of the 
second century proved not unworthy of the eulogy 
pronounced upon the faithful Angel of the first. 
For twenty years or more the disciple of S. John, 
and the trusted friend of S. Ignatius, he first comes 
before us a sober pastor at the head of a well ordered 

hei 6 d S and" noc k> both." sheep and shepherd nailed to the cross 

the flock. f Christ," at the time when the Martyr of Antioch 
halted for a few days at Smyrna, on his memorable 
journey to Rome. The latter entrusted him with 
the dearest remaining care of his life. He was to 
have a fit head provided for the Church at Antioch ; 
to write to all the Churches which Ignatius could 
not write to himself; and to do what else in his dis- 
cretion might be found expedient. 

His style His stvle, in the portion that remains of his excel- 

and char- *> J x 

acter. lent Epistle to the Philippians, 3 is in keeping with 
the sobriety and simplicity of his character. There 
is nothing in it of the terseness of Ignatius, that con- 
centrated power which makes old thoughts crystallize 
into something new and rare. Holy Scripture is the 
staple of his writings. He quotes much, — quotes gen- 
erally in the letter, and seems drawn along by the 
sacred text, as if he loved it too much to let go his 

1 Rey. ii. 8-10. death, etc.) are against the iden 

2 The probabilities (from the tity of the two. 

age of Poiycarp at the time of his 3 Patr. Apostol. Oxon. 1838. 



CH. m.] S. POLYCARP. J41 

hold, or to break it off abruptly from any of its con- 
nections. Less brilliant than Ignatius, and perhaps 
with less claim to any " gift" of divine illumination, 
he was eminently fitted for the providential end for 
which his life on earth seems to have been so extra- 
ordinarily prolonged. Not faithful merely, but lit- 
erally and punctiliously faithful, conservative of jots 
and tittles, he was just the man for a theodromos^ as a theo- 
Ignatius phrases it 4 , — a divine message-bearer from 
the Apostolic age to a second and third generation 
of zealous witnesses to the Truth. 

"It seems to me that I still hear him telling" — Portrait 
so writes Irenseus, 5 the most intellectual of the disci- irenseus. 
pies of his school — " how he had conversed with S. 
John and other eye-witnesses of Jesus Christ ; re- 
peating the very words he had heard from their 
mouths, with many particulars of the miracles and 
doctrines of that divine Saviour, all of which was in 
closest conformity with what we learn from the 
Sacred Scriptures, from the writings, namely, of 
those who were themselves eye-witnesses of the 
Word of Life." 

About the middle of the century, during the reign visit to 
of Antoninus Pius, he made a visit to Rome, desirous A.Tm 
of conference with Anicetus, then Bishop of that 
city. There he bore his testimony against Marcion, 
Carpocrates, and other heretics of the day. On the 
question already agitated in the Church — the practice, 
namely, of feasting like the Jews on the fourteenth 
day of the month Msan, 6 — he maintained the tradition 
of S. John and S. Philip against Anicetus and the 
Roman custom. Neither party had power to con- 

4 Ad Polycarp. 7. 6 For the Paschal question, see 

5 Apud. Euseb. v. 20. ch. ix. of this book. 



142 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. H. 

two tradi- vince tlie other. Against the practice of S. John 
and S. Philip, the Romans alleged that of S. Peter 
and S. Paul. Neither Anicetus nor Polycarp seems 
to have dreamed of any authority vested in the 
Eoman See by which the controversy might be once 
for all decided. They parted as they had met, in 
peace. And for nearly two centuries longer, the 
Christians of Asia Minor, with a firmness sufficiently 
vexatious at the time, but precious in after ages as a 
testimony to the primitive equality of the Churches, 
adhered to their tradition. 

Excessive In his martyr-death, as for so many years in his 
martyr-life, Polycarp was still the faithful theo- 
drome ; not running before, but with tranquil 
humility content to follow after, the will of God. 
We have already had occasion to notice, that, owing 
in part to continuous persecution, and in part to a 
contagious enthusiasm which the Church resisted 
but not with absolute success, the glory of witness- 
ing for Christ was sometimes coveted by persons 
unworthy of the honor. Hence a needless asperity 
at times, or even a species of bravado, before the tri- 
bunals. Hence, among some, an actual courting or 
provoking of popular hatred. Hence, in short, many 

volunteer sore scandals to the Church. Early in the century 
ar yis ' the wretched Peregrinus had shown that one might 
stand up manfully as a confessor, in times of persecu- 
tion, and yet be unable to keep his feet amid the 
fumes of subsequent applause. More recently a 
Phrygian of the name of Quintus had thrust himself 
forward as a volunteer for martyrdom ; but as soon 
as he heard the lions roar he was ready to sacrifice 
to idols. Lapses of this kind, becoming more fre- 
quent as the Church increased in numbers, made it 



CH. m.] S. POLYCAEP. 143 

incumbent on pastors and leaders to set an example 
of a new kind of confessorship, — the confessorship, 
namely, of a prudent circumspection : a thing vastly 
more difficult in stirring times than any other form 
of faith and courage. 

The first demand for the sacrifice of Polycarp The circus 
arose from the amphitheatre at Smyrna, on oc- 
casion, we are told, of the martyrdom of Germani- 
cus with eleven other Christians of Philadelphia. 
These amphitheatres, — huge mouths of hell as the 
Christians properly esteemed them, with their beast- 
fights and gladiator-shows, bubbling with all the 
lewd and cruel passions of the idolatrous rabble of 
great cities, — were the recognized feeders of that 
blood-thirsty spirit which disgraced the civilization 
of the old Roman world ; and so long as they were 
tolerated, were unfailing fountain-heads of new perse- 
cutions. There is a fearful description by S. Augus- its baiefui 
tine 7 of the way the soul could be wrought on, and 
metamorphosed in these abominable dens. How 
horror stiffened into cruelty at the first sight of 
blood ; how cruelty, amid the growls of lacerated 
brutes, and the cheers and jeers of monsters in 
human shape, elevated itself into a sort of demon- 
iacal possession ; how the shrinking novice of a few 
hours since, now " beheld, shouted, kindled," being 
magnetized, as it were, into a phrensy of mingled 
terror and delight : all this has been vividly por- 
trayed, and to those who have observed the plastic 
nature of the soul is by no means difficult to imagine. 

Between the darkness of such scenes and the pure 
light of Christianity, there could be no sort of con- 

T S. Augustine, Confess, vi. 8. and barbarity of heathen shows, 
On the subject of the indecency see Tertullian de Spectaculis. 



144 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. II. 

cord. Regarding them as the rallying-point of the 
daemons whom the Gospel was dislodging from 
shrine and grove, believers looked npon them with 
an aversion not to be disguised. The hate, of course, 
was fully reciprocated. When the name of Polycarp, 
therefore, was uttered in the theatre of Smyrna, it 
was caught up at once, and resounded on every side. 

cauKr " ^way w * tn tne atheists, 8 let Polycarp be brought I" 
It was a popular delirium, not to be resisted, not to 
be evaded. 

m s The saint, however, yielding to the urgency of his 

prudence. ^ ' ' ™ , ° ° " 

friends, withdrew for a while from the reach of the in- 
furiated crowd. In a retired country-seat, at no great 
distance from the city, he spent his time in prayers 
night and day for the welfare of the Churches, and 
tranquilly awaited the good pleasure of the Lord. 
Hunted from this place of refuge, he magnanimously 
yielded to entreaty and fled to another. Meanwhile 

His dream he had had a vision in which his pillow appeared all 
in flames, and. on the strength of it had foretold the 
'kind of martyrdom he was called to undergo. Dis- 
covered in his second retreat, he said simply, " the 
Lord's will he done" and gave himself up. Two hours 
were granted him for prayer, his captors the mean- 
while regaling themselves with a collation, which 
the venerable Bishop, mindful to the last of the duty 
of hospitality, had been careful to provide. 

His con- o n hi s wa y to the city he was overtaken by Herod 

fession. " 

the Irenarch and Mcetas his father, who took him 
up into their chariot, and tried to persuade him to 

8 " We are called Atheists," guilty to the charge ; but not so 

says Justin Martyr, " and so far with regard to the only true 

as those called gods by the God, etc." Apol. ii. 6. 
heathen are concerned, we plead 



CH. m.] S. POLTCAEP. 145 

call Caesar Lord, and offer the sacrifice enjoined in 
such cases. He simply answered, I can not do what 
you advise. Brought before Statins Quadratus the 
Proconsul, he was ordered to repeat the prayer for 
the destruction of the godless, which, being intended 
as an imprecation against the Christians, had become 
a gathering cry of the Smyrna rabble. But the lan- 
guage of the prayer was capable of a Christian in- 
terpretation. Polycarp, therefore, was content to re- 
peat the words prescribed, looking up with beaming 
face towards Heaven. "When commanded to curse 
Christ, he mildly answered, Fourscore and six years 
have I served Him, and He hath done me no ill : 
how then can I curse my King and Saviour ? To 
the further demand, that he should swear by the 
Fortune of Csesar, he replied that he was a Chris- 
tian, the meaning of which name he was ready to 
explain, if the Proconsul would grant him a hearing. 

Moved probably by a feeling of compassion, the False 
Proconsul then advised him to plead his cause be- 
fore the people. But Polycarp was not to be led into 
such a crooked course. He saw, what certain apolo- 
gists for the Magistrates of that age are strangely 
blind to, 9 that men in authority had no right to put 
the sword committed to them, into the hands of an 
irresponsible, bloodthirsty mob, and then to wash 
their hands, Pilate-like, as though they were inno- 
cent in the matter. Polycarp, doubtless, was well 
aware of this. To the soft words of the Proconsul, 
therefore, he replied with dignity and firmness : — 

9 It is true, however, that many believers ccmld be induced to ac- 

niagistrates were ready to con- cept dishonorable modes of es- 

nive at the escape of Christians ; cape. See Tertull. ad Scap. iv. 
perhaps most of them were, when 

7 



A. D. 

167-9. — — & 



146 HISTOKY OF THE CHURCH. [BK. II. 

Honor "Before you I am willing; to make answer : for 

where due. ^ ° ' 

Princes and Magistrates are ordained of God, and 
we Christians are tanght to render them the honor 
that is dne : but with regard to the populace, they 
have no snch claim, and I am under no obligation to 
plead before them." 

feSSf" The games at this time being over, Polycarp, ac- 
cording to his prediction, was condemned to the 
stake. The Christians of Smyrna, who witnessed 
and recorded the transaction, saw the flames gather 
round and enclose him as in a fiery pavilion, while a 
delicious perfume floated* through the air. 10 As the 
fire did not reach him at once, some one, perhaps 
out of compassion, plunged a sword into his side. 
His friends gathered what could be found of his re- 
mains, and reverentially consigned them to a tomb. 
" There," they add, with a discriminating piety 
worthy of their saintly teacher, " we hope to assem- 
ble hereafter, and celebrate with joy the clay of his 

Honors martyrdom ; not to worship him, however, as the 
Pagans say, but to contemplate the example he has 
set, and to learn, if needs be, to imitate it. As to 
worship, we can never abandon Jesus Christ. We 
worship Him because He is the Son of God. The 
martyrs we love and follow, because of the very 
great love they have shown for their King and 
Master." " 

conserva- Such was the end of Polycarp, a man full of years, 

tivespm . ^j ££ ni « t — t i ie yei ,y em "k di m ent of that quiet, con- 
servative, order-loving spirit, which was emiuently 

10 These facts, easily enough ex- occasion, or any other welcome 

plained, do not seem to be men- coincidence, 
tioned as miracles, but merely as " JEcclesice Smymen&fa de Mar- 

pleasing incidents ; just as one tyrio S. Polycarpi Bpistol. Cir- 

notices a fine day on any special cularis. Patrum Apostol., etc. 



paid hhn. 



CH. IV.] THE LYONNESE MARTYRS. 147 

characteristic of the Churches of S. John. He left 
numerous disciples, many of whose names were re- 
corded in the roll of Martyrs. It is said, in a doubt- 
ful passage of the Epistle which describes his death, 
that when the sword pierced his side, a dove 12 flew 
out of the wound and winged its way toward Heaven. 
The story is without value as a matter of fact ; but, 
if it were true, there could be no better symbol of the 
change that was already taking place in the aspect 
of Christianity. The dove-like temper was already 
in large measure departed. A spirit not less need- 
ful for the times — a spirit of enquiry, agitation and 
polemical discussion — was rapidly approaching in its 
place. 

It is also said in the Epistle, that " he appeased the geai <£_ 
persecution ; sealing it up, as it were, with his testi- secution. 
mony." This applies, however, only to Smyrna and 
other cities of Asia. In Gaul, the persecution con- 
tinued some years longer. 



CHAPTEE IV. 

THE LTONNESE MARTYRS. 

From the tree planted by S. Paul and watered as £ Tall3c 
we have seen for nearly a century- bY S. John and A - D - 

fibout* 

S. Polycarp, vigorous scions had sprung up on the i4o- 
distant banks of the Eh one, among the Graeco-Gallic 
population of Lyons and Yienne. 1 The venerable 

12 Tins story is not found in all been changed by transcribers into 

copies ; and where it occurs, it perutera (dove). 

has been ingeniously conjectured, * It is probable enough that 

that cp'aristera (on the left) has other foundations had been laid 



148 HISTOEY OF THE CHURCH. [BK. II. 

Pothinus, a friend of Polycarp, and of abont the same 
age, left Asia, it is probable towards the middle of the 
century, and settling in Lyons became Bishop there. 
With him was a numerous and zealous band, among 
whom the name of Irenseus is most interesting to the 
modern reader. Under their auspices, the Church 
grew and flourished, as Churches then grew ; making 
little noise in the world, and keeping scant record of 
itself for the benefit of posterity, till the blade and 
the ear had matured into the full corn, and the sickle 
of persecution was sent in to reap the first harvest. 
f h ' S bi cry d ^ s usua, l at ^ s Period, the first cry for blood was 
a- d. ' uttered among the brutalized rabble of the Amphi- 
170-176. theatre. We learn from Tacitus how admirably the 
Province, as it was called, having been first vanquished 
by the power of the sword, was gradually tamed by 
the luxurious appliances — the baths, theatres and tem- 
ples — of the wise and wicked Circe of the Seven Hills. 
The history of Christianity is a proof that the taming 
was hardly more than skin-deep. A capricious mob, 
fawning on the hand that fed them with bread and 
Heathen circus-shows, is all that heathenism ever made of the 
lower classes ; and even this had continually to be 
repurchased with fresh sacrifices. Beast-fights led to 
gladiator-fights, and, gladiator-fights becoming tame, 
the prisons were emptied into the arena ; and, at 
length, the jails themselves yielding an inadequate 

in Gaul prior to this, but nothing taught his people to sing indiffer- 

is known of them. See Lorenz. ently in Greek and Latin. L'abbe 

Summ. Hint. Gallo-Franc, and Guettee opens his history with a 

Gregorii Turon. Hint. &c. It lively chapter sur Vtylise Gallo- 

shows the tenacity of the Greek Romaine: his facts, however, bear 

foundation, that as late as the more on l'eglise Gallo-Grecque. 
sixth century, Ceesarius of Aries 



rabble. 



CH. IV.] THE LYONNESE MARTYRS. 149 

supply to the phrensied cry for blood, 2 hungry eyes 
began to be cast upon the little nock of Christians. 

Attention once turned that way, persecution fol- £obbed na 
lowed as a matter of course. In the language of the 
Lyonnese Confessors, the devil himself went to and 
fro through the streets of the city, in the shape of a 
savage beast, and stirred popular excitement into an 
ungovernable phrensy. Christians began to be hooted 
and pelted, wherever they appeared. The next step 
was to sieze them and drag them into the forum; 
where, accused by a blood-thirsty mob, and interro- 
gated by complaisant magistrates, they confessed the 
Name of Christ and were cast into prison. From Thrown 

-t into 

the jails they are carried once more, for insult rather P rison - 

than for trial, into the presence of the Prefect of the 

city. 

At this point of the proceedings occurs one of 

those acts of heroic self-devotion, which, happening Heroic 

t • -i -it conduct - 

as it did m a luxurious and degenerate age, could 

hardly fail to impress the minds, of the more 

thoughtful at least, of the persecutors themselves. 

Yettius Epagathus, a youth of honorable character 

and station, had not been numbered as yet among 

the objects of attack. But when he saw the injustice 

with which his brethren were treated, he could not 

contain himself. He advanced to the tribunal. He 

2 " Fluctnat sequoreo fremiti! ra- was, it was considered innocent, 
bieque faventum, in comparison with the filthy enor- 
Carceribus nondum resolutis, mities of the theatre. Still, the 
mobile vulgus." former, says Lactantius, was more 
"But we leaping, raging- like maddening; for the spectators be- 
madmen, striking each other, . . . came so excited, that " they often 
and sometimes going naked from proceeded from words to blows, 
the show." For much more to the and a general battle ensued." Lac- 
same effect, see Onuphr. Panvin. tant. Divin. Institut. 63. 
de Lad. Give. Bad as the circus 

2* 



A true 
Paraclete 



away. 



Crimes 
alleged 



150 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. II. 

demanded to be heard on the side of the accused. 
"Art thou, then, a Christian?" asked the governor 
in reply. Vettius confessed, and was condemned to 
death. "Thus he showed himself a paraclete ," says 
the Lyonnese narrative, " being filled with the true 
Paraclete, which enabled him to show his love for 
the brethren, following the Lamb whithersoever He 
goeth." 
Ten faii Of the others who had been seized, about ten fell 

a.wa.v. ' 

away, to the great discomfort of their brethren. 
Certain slaves also were forced, by threats of im- 
prisonment or by actual torture, to give information 
against their masters. Incest, conspiracy, and Thy- 
estean repasts, were among the crimes alleged on the 
testimony of these wretches. But no accusation was 
too gross for the fanatical credulity of the public. 
What is more surprising, even well-instructed per- 
sons, relatives and friends of the accused, allowed 
their minds to be contaminated by the foul breath 
of calumny ; and palpable lies, by dinf of repetition, 
acquired all the force and certainty of unquestionable 
Tortures, facts. The victims, therefore, suffered without pity 
and without redress. Huddled together in dark and 
loathsome jails, stretched on the rack, cut, mangled, 
roasted, burnt, and subjected in short to every 
variety of torture, they had no resource, no argu- 
ment, but the unvarying confession, " I am a Chris- 
tian : no wickedness is practiced or tolerated among 
us." 

It is pleasing to observe, that among the Lyonnese 
charity Confessors the supreme merit of charity held its pro- 
sufferers, per place. They prayed fervently for those who had 
fallen in the hour of trial, and their prayers were 
answered. The greater part of the lapsed returned, 



CH. IV.] THE LYONNESE MAETYES. 151 

and recovered their good standing. What was vastly 
more difficult, the Martyrs were taught by a com- 
mon calamity to forget certain differences of opinion, 
which at other times, perhaps, had received too 
much of their attention. One instance of this 
deserves to be particularly noticed. 

From the time of S. Paul there had existed in the Asc f tic 

party. 

Church an ascetic or encratite party, which some- 
times as a matter of voluntary self-discipline, and in 
some cases from a less justifiable motive, abstained 
altogether from animal food and from wine. Alci- AiciMades. 
biades, one of the confessors, belonged to this class. 
As soon, however, as one of his companions was 
moved in a dream to warn him that it was " neither 
right nor proper to reject the good creatures of God," 
he changed his course and thankfully partook of 
what was set before him. There is nothing that 
pride more reluctantly gives up than a supereroga- 
tory virtue. The merit of Alcibiades, therefore, in 
yielding so cheerfully to the scruples of others, was 
justly regarded by the Lyonnese as an extraor- 
dinary proof of the presence of God's Spirit among 
them. 

Deacon Sanctus, probably of Latin or Gallic sanctus. 
origen, was a martyr such as S. Ignatius would 
have delighted to contemplate. He stood like an 
anvil under the strokes of his tormentors, and like 
an anvil responded by a single ringing note. Chris- 
tlauus sum was all he had to say of his name, city, 
race, condition, and profession. Christianus sum 
he kept on repeating, till his body, we are told, was 
a mass of sores and cinders, mangled, shrivelled, and 
distorted, with hardly a vestige left of the human Mature 
shape. Maturus a new convert, Attains a pillar of 



152 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. II. 

Alexander the Church in Pergamos, and Alexander a Phry- 

PotMnus. gian, were equally heroic. The " blessed Pothinus," 
bowed beneath the weight of more than ninety 
years, many of which had been spent in the Episco- 
pate at Lyons, showed a dignified serenity worthy 
of a friend of S. Polycarp and S. John. When 
asked by the Governor, "Who is the God of the 
Christians ?" he said, " Show thyself worthy, and 
thon shalt know." After shameful ill-treatment by 
the mob, he was thrown into prison, where he peace- 
fully expired. 

Biandina. But the glory of this great battle for the Faith 
seems by unanimous consent to have fallen to the lot 
of Biandina a poor female slave, whose mistress like 
herself was among the confessors. The fiendish 
atrocities inflicted upon this woman are minutely 
described in the letter written by the survivors. 
Suffice it to say here, that as her apparent weakness 
led the heathen to suppose her an easy prey, so her 
unexpected firmness and almost miraculous vitality 
provoked their malice to a point of insatiable fury. 
Every device of cruelty was exhausted upon her and 
upon her brother, a lad of fifteen years of age. To 
sustain the courage of this latter seems to have been 
her principal concern. Amid the horrors of such 
scenes, it is delightful to observe the reverence and 
affection with which her heroic struggle was wit- 

The lowly nessed by her companions. From a feeble slave she 
was exalted in their eyes into a princess mighty with 
God, a true mother in Israel. Her presence per- 
vades the good fight of Faith from the beginning to 
the end. 

The confessors who survived bore their honors, we 



CH. IV.] THE LYONNESE MARTYRS. 153 

are told, with meekness and moderation. 8 "They Good 
humbled themselves nnder the mighty Hand by of the 
which they had been so honorably exalted. They 
defended all their brethren who had lapsed, they 
criminated none : they loosed all, they bound none." 
The spirit of S. John, it is plain, was still mighty in 
the Churches. 

It needs only to be added that the narrative from Their 
which this chapter is taken was written 4 by one of 
the survivors, and sent to the mother Churches in 
Asia Minor. The witness unto blood before the 
heathen was accompanied also with a protest against 
the new Prophets, probably the Montanists, by whom The new 
the peace of the Church had been for some time dis- con P e 
turbed. Another letter with the same condemnation 
of the rising heresy, addressed to Eleutherus, then 
Bishop of Rome, 5 was sent by the hand of the Pres- 
byter Irenaeus, with a testimonial to his character 
which his subsequent career in the Church proves 
to have been well deserved. 

In other parts of Gaul, and in Rome and other Troubles 
cities of Italy, the persecution raged for some time, elsewhere * 
and added many names to the roll of the Martyrs. 
It was accompanied more or less by war, pestilence, 
and famine; in the midst of all which we get but 

3 The emphasis laid upon this subject, seem to countenance the 
and similar traits in the letter of supposition that Eleutherus was 
the confessors shows that a dif- the Bishop mentioned by Tertul- 
ferent spirit had already begun lian (Adv. Prax.) who favored 
to show itself. the new prophets. See Valesius 

4 Euseb. v. 1-4. ad Euseb. v. 3. There are not 

5 The phrase here employed — facts enough to determine the 
r?/c Tu>v £kk/j]giC)v elpr/vrjg evena question; but the statement of 
-TrpecSevovTcc — " negotiating for Tertullian seems to accord better 
the peace of the Churches" — and with the impetuous character of 
the fact that the martyrs in prison Victor, the successor of Eleu- 
had written several letters on the therus. 

7* 



154 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. n. 

occasional and nnsatisfactor y glimpses of the state of 
Gallic Christianity. About the end of the century 
The P ru- another persecution came, and proved still more fatal 
vine. to the Church in Lyons. But here, as elsewhere, the 
early proverb was verified, that the more the grass is 
cut, the more it grows : the more the vine is pruned, 
the more choice and abundant is the vintage. The 
blood of the Gallic Martyrs proved to be the seed of 
an unfailing and increasing harvest. 



truth. 



CHAPTEE V. 

JUSTIN MARTYR. 

search of Justin, sumamecl the Martyr, a title won by his 
apologetic pen, as well as sealed by his blood in wit- 
ness of the Truth, was a native of JSTeapolis a city 
of Samaria, and probably of heathen parentage. 
He was born about the beginning of the second cen- 
tury. Tormented from early youth by an insatiable 
thirst for knowledge, he put himself first under the 
tuition of a famous Stoic ; * but finding, upon trial, 
that the man could teach him nothing with reference 
to God, and that he rather despised the earnest in- 
quiries of his pupils, he repaired to the school of an 

ms able and subtle Professor of Peripatetic wisdom. 

Him he found, however, to be a worshipper of gold 

s a Dialog, cum Trypkone Judceo. better insight into the amiable 

The slightly romantic tinge of but earnest character of the mar- 

this narrative does not impair its tyr. Eusebius makes Ephesus 

credibility ; it merely gives us a the scene of this Dialogue : iv. 18. 



teachers. 



CH. V.] JUSTIN MARTYR. 155 

as the summum bonum, and indifferent to all truth 
that had not a marketable value. Justin, therefore, 
left him in disgust. At length, hearing of a learned 
Pythagorean, who had the reputation of being quite 
inaccessible to the charms of money, he determined 
to throw himself at his feet, and to become, if per- 
mitted, one of his disciples. The philosopher seems 
to have been nothing more than a pompous charlatan. 
He possessed, however, no little capacity for words, 
and in the science of his school imagined he had a 
key to all knowledge, human and divine. " Tell 
me," says he to the eager aspirant, " are you an 
adept in music, astronomy, and geometry ? For by 
these sciences alone can you learn to abstract the 
soul from sensible objects, and fix it in contempla- 
tion of what is beautiful in itself." Justin, however, 
knew little of the stars. Perhaps he cared little for Physical 
them. God, he felt, was nearer to his soul ; and he 
could put no confidence in a system which professed 
to seek Him by climbing up into the heights of the 
physical heavens, or by descending into the deep 'of 
laborious intellectual abstractions. Grieved, and sick 
at heart, therefore, he turned from the Pythagorean, 
and began to look elsewhere for help in his spiritual 
need. 

His next experience was in connection with some Becomes a 
of the followers of Plato. Here he was better satis- 
fied. In the world of richly imaginative and mystic 
speculation, into which his new teachers introduced 
him, his soul began to warm and to expand ; his 
mind was at least agreeably occupied ; and though 
his heart was not as yet filled with the knowledge 
which alone could give it rest, he began to feel, as it 
were, the budding of the wings which were to lift it 



156 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. n. 

above self. Hope, in other words, revived within 
him. Intoxicated with a vague but delicious sense 
of spiritual beauty, he seemed to himself to be just 
upon the verge of the crowning joy. The unrealities 
of sense were fading from his view, and the vision 
of true being, nay of God Himself, might open upon 
him in a moment. So full was he of this expecta- 
tion, so earnest and real in the midst of a cloud of 

Krlams" philosophic dreams, that he determined to withdraw 
himself entirely from the tumult of the world, and 
selecting the loneliest spot he could find on the sea- 
shore, there to await in silence and meditation the 
fulfilment of his hopes. 

He meets ]^ r was he disappointed altogether in his confident 

with an X Jr S 

Evangelist expectation. He who heareth the young ravens that 
call upon Him, would not turn a deaf ear to so ear- 
nest a seeker as the eager and unselfish Platonician. 
As Justin walked and mused, within hearing of the 
multitudinous voices of the sea, he was met by a 
grave old man of a certain sweetness of expression. 
The philosopher was charmed. He stopped, and, 
unconsciously to himself, fixed his eyes eagerly upon 
the stranger. " Do you know me," said the latter, 
" that you gaze so earnestly upon me ?" " JSTo," an- 
swered Justin, "I am only surprised to meet one 
like you in this solitary place." " I am here," said 
the stranger, " because my soul is disquieted on ac- 
count of certain of my friends. They are tossed on 
the sea, and I am anxious to find them, or hear 
tidings of them." 
a Chris- The acquaintance thus mysteriously begun ripened 
losopher. soon into confidence and friendship. Justin dis- 
coursed of what was uppermost in his mind, the 
beauty and the sweetness of true philosophy. To know 



CH. v.] JUSTIN MARTYR. 157 

what really is, to seek and love the Truth, this, he 
declared, is the only thing worth living for, the only 
thing to fill and satisfy the heart. To his surprise 
he found the stranger more at home on such subjects 
than himself. Without any scientific pretension he 
spoke of the nature of Gocl, of the soul, of the true The 

r . School of 

philosophy of life, with a tranquillity and assurance Christ. 
that captivated the ingenuous seeker, and led him 
finally to the conclusion that if he was to make any 
progress in heavenly wisdom, he must begin at the 
lowest round of the ladder, and become a disciple in 
the school of Jesus Christ. 

To this, however, he had to be led gradually, the study of 
prejudices against Christianity being as gross among tures. 
the well-instructed heathen as among the rabble, 
and far more inveterate. His teacher, therefore, was 
content to introduce him to the Old Testament Scrip- 
tures. Struck with the sublimity and beauty of 
these sacred writings, he studied them with single- 
hearted earnestness; thus laying the foundation of 
that hermeneutic skill which he ever afterwards 
regarded as his charisma, or spiritual gift. From 
the Old he was led easily into the New. The real 
character of Christianity, and the truth with regard Prejudices 
to the life and conversation of its professors, began to 
dawn upon him. " I had heard much against them," 
says he, " and shared in the common delusion. But 
when I considered their courage in encountering 
death and every other terror, I felt at once that 
they could not be guilty of the crimes of which they 
were accused. To a mere voluptuary, to a shameless 
debauchee, to one who takes delight in eating human 
flesh, death cannot prove otherwise than terrible ; 
for it puts an end to the gross pleasures in which 



158 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. II. 

they spend their life. The Christians, however, 
welcome death with joy." 2 Considerations of this 
kind opened the way to inquiry, and inquiry led to 
satisfaction and conviction. 

caning! That he ever entered the ministry is extremely 
doubtful. 3 Indeed, in the absence of any positive 
proof that he did, it seems more probable that he 
found his " gift" conld be exercised to greater ad- 
vantage under the garb of a philosopher, and in the 
freedom of lay life, than amid the confining and 
pressing duties of the ordinary priesthood. Certain 
it is, that he visited many countries, and had argu- 
mentative discussions both with Jews and Greeks. 

Public dis- His controversy in Ephesus with Trypho, a learned 

cussions. " .-it i % . -i • 

J ew who had survived the horrors ot the insurrec- 
tion of Bar Cochba, and his two Apologies, ad- 
dressed, the one to the Emperor Aurelius, and the 
other to the Roman Senate and People, with some 
other works or fragments of works, remain to show 
the way in which these discussions were conducted. 
Without going into an analysis of any of these 
writings, 4 it is worth while to notice, that Justin 
interpreted both Hebrew and Greek learning on the 
same general principles ; finding in both innumera- 
ble types or foresh ado wings of the truth of the 
Christ Gospel ; and making all earnest thought of all ages, 
and all races, to centre, as it were, in the incarnate 
Word, to point towards Him, and in Him to receive 
its complete and harmonious interpretation. Thus, 

2 Apol. i. Opinions of Justin Martyr : John 

3 Tilleniont thinks he was a (Kaye), Bishop of Lincoln. Jv»- 
Presbyter — Mem. pour servir. vol. tin. d. Martyrer, Semisch, trans- 
2, part 2, — but on insufficient lated by Ryland, and published 
grounds. in Clark"* Biblical Cabinet. Volck- 

* Account of the Writings and mar, die Ze.it ds. Just. M. 



in all. 



CH. V.] JUSTIN MARTYR. 159 

not the Law and the Prophets only, but the Poets 
and Philosophers, were fulfilled in Christ. 

In fact, the Logos, the First-born of God, who is 
also God, being from all eternity immanent in God, 
but coming forth from God for creation, was regard- 
ed by Justin as the seed-light to the ages that pre- J h ^ t Seed ' 
ceded the revelation of the Gospel ; so that upright 
heathen, Socrates for example, were undeveloped 
believers, being obedient to the light that was in 
them. 5 On this ground he apologizes for the lateness 
of the Incarnation. As the first days of the creation 
had light enough for growth, though destitute as yet 
of sun and moon and stars, so with the ages, and the 
races, among which Christ was unrevealed. Justin, 
therefore, would not deny the good that existed in 
heathendom ; he preferred showing how it pointed 
to a far greater good. It was somewhat inconsistent 
with all this, that he ascribed the numerous ceremo- 
nies which pagan worship had in common with 
Christianity, to the malicious apery of dsemons ; 
these latter mimicking the truth in order to make it 
odious. 6 In tracing the unconscious prophecies of 
heathen poetry and, philosophy, or even of heathen 
oracles, Justin, it must be confessed, is not very 
critical ; quoting oftentimes from works unquestion- 
ably spurious, and some of them fabrications of the 
age in which he lived. 

In his treatment of matters of faith, and especially Justin's 
in dealing with the great mysteries of the Creed, his 
orthodoxy in general is beyond all question. As an 
interpreter, however, to Jews and Greeks, and as 

5 The Logon endiathetos — Logos 6 e. g. Bread and wine used in 

prophoricos — Logon spermaticos. the mysteries of Mithras ; and 

See Neander's Lectures on the bapti&rns, or ablutions, in almost 

History of Christian Dogmas. all forms of heathen worship. 



160 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. n. 

one of the earliest who attempted, so to speak, to 
translate the language of simple faith into the dialect 
of philosophers and dispnters, he is betrayed occa- 
sionally into modes of expression, which at a later 
period would hardly have been considered admis- 
sible, or safe. In all cases the phraseology of early 
writers has to be received with a certain allowance. 7 
It could hardly be expected, that the first attempts 
to give a philosophic or scientific form to truths 
commonly received in the Church should be entirely 
conclusive. The wonder is, not that we find some 
objectionable phrases in the early fathers, or some 
untenable positions, but that we find so few. 
m f . With regard to matters of opinion, or interpreta- 

opinions. ° r 7 x 

tion, Justin fell into some mistakes from too careless 
a following of the letter of Holy Scripture. He was 
an advocate of the Millenarian doctrine. From a 
notion, that the sons of God mentioned in the begin- 
ning of the sixth chapter of Genesis were Angels, he 
favored the absurd hypothesis, that children were 
begotten by them of the daughters of men, and that 
the offspring thus begotten became Daemons of the 
Gentiles. It is more to his credit, that he departed 
from a common prejudice of his day, in allowing a 
possibility of salvation to Jewish Christians 8 who 

7 For example, creation and gen- divinity of Christ, in the Dialogue 
eration we're for some time more with Trypho, viz., " 1 do not agree 
or less confounded. In the tenth loith these, because I have been 
chapter of Bishop Kaye's Writ- taught not to follow men, but the 
ings of Justin Martyr the reader declarations of Christ and the 
will find a summary of Justin's Prophets" — has been regarded by 
views, as illustrated by passages some as indicative of a certain 
from Tatian, Athenagoras, and laxness in his views. I should 
Theophilus. rather infer the reverse. The 

8 His lenient way of speaking firmer a man's faith, the better he 
of the Ebionite denial of the can afford to use mild language. 



CH. V.] JUSTIN MARTYR. 161 

conscientiously continued in the observance of the 
Law. 

As a witness to the religions customs of Christians Religious 
in his day, Justin speaks with less reserve than was 
common with early writers, and gives us the most 
exact information we have : the outline he presents 
supplying some features of ritual in which Pliny's 
famous letter is deficient. 9 Judging from his account, 
neither Baptism nor the Eucharist had received any 
ceremonial additions to the severe simplicity of Apos- 
tolic times. In describing the administration of the 
Lord's Supper, he seems to have followed the order 
of the Service now known as that of S. James. 10 

The latter portion of his life was spent bv the His con* 

x . fession. 

Apologist in Rome, remaining all day at his house 
near the baths of Timotheus, and conversing freely 
with those who came to him for instruction or discus- 
sion. During this period he incurred the fixed hatred 
of the Stoic Crescens, whom he handled somewhat 
roughly in argument, and to whose influence in high 
quarters he was probably indebted for the Martyr's 
crown. According to the Acts of his Martyrdom, 11 a 
piece authenticated by its primitive modesty and sim- 
plicity, he was brought, with several other Christians, 
before the tribunal of Junius Rusticus Prefect of the 
City, not long before the death of S. Polycarp. 12 

9 Kaye's Justin 31. chap. iv. charist from the Love Feast ; (1) 

Among the particulars mention- special observance of Sunday; 

ed, we may notice, (1) the doc- (8) alms for orphans, widows, (fee. 

trine of Baptism and the Eucha- Apolog. i. 

rist, in which the grace given is 10 Palmer's Origines Liturg. 

much insisted on ; (2) the careful Asseman. Cod. Liturg. torn. v. 

preparation (fasting and prayer) ; n Given in Baronius ; also, in 

(3) the kiss of peace ; (4) wine Tillemont. 

mixed with water in theEucharist; w The dates areuncertain: Poly- 

(5) the bearing of a portion to the carp's death is variously stated at 

absent; (6) separation of the Eu- 147, 169, 175; Justin's is put as 



162 HISTOKY OF THE CHUECH. [BK. II. 

" Obey the will of tlie Gods and the commands of 
the Emperor" was, as usual, the opening of the trial. 
In Justin's reply, there is little of the sententious 
brevity or dignified reserve of a Polycarp or Pothi- 
nns ; nor does he take refuge in the simple Cliristianus 
surn, that ringing anvil-note of Lyonnese Sanctus : 
his attitude has more of the dialectician ; — a man of 
faith, indeed, but ready and even eager to give a rea- 
son for the faith that is in him. " There is nothing to 
reprehend in a man, who obeys the commands of our 
Saviour, Jesus Christ." " But what is your profes- 
sion," says Rusticus, " to what school do you belong?" 
" I once strove," he replied, " to become acquainted 
with every school of philosophy, and to make my- 
self master of every science ; but having sought the 
Truth on till sides without success, I finally embraced 
the philosophy of the Christians, not considering 
whether it pleased or displeased the votaries of er- 
ror." " Wretched man !" cried the Prefect, " you 
follow that doctrine, then?" " Yes, I follow that 
doctrine, and with joy, for it shows me the Truth." 
" But what is Truth ?" " The Truth," answered Jus- 
His creed, tin, " is to believe in one God, who created all things 
visible and invisible, and to confess our Lord Jesus 
Christ the Son of God, announced long ago by the 
Prophets, "Who is to come again to judge all men, 
and Who is the Saviour, as well as the Teacher of 
His true Disciples. Far be it from me to pretend to 
speak worthily of His infinite greatness, or of His 
Divinity. Such a theme belongs rather to the Proph- 
ets, who so long before predicted His coming upon 
earth." The Prefect then asked him, in what place 

early as 165. I have put Justin af- as belonging to a later period of 
ter Polycarp and Pothinus, merely intellectual culture. 



com- 
panions. 



CH. V.] JUSTIN MARTYR. 163 

the Christians assembled for their worship. "We 
assemble where we can," said Justin : " God is not 
confined to any place. Invisible, he fills the Heavens 
and the Earth, and the faithful adore Him every- 
where : in every place they offer Him the honor and 
worship due unto His Name." 

After some further questions, Pusticus addressed His 
himself to the companions of Justin. Carito and 
Caritina answered, that by the goodness of God they 
were Christians. Euelpistus said, " I am a slave of 
Caesar, but a Christian. Jesus Christ, by His grace, 
hath made me free." Hierax and Liberianus ac- 
knowledged themselves servants and adorers of the 
only true God. Seeing little chance of making an 
impression upon these simple folk, and feeling, it 
may be, more interest in the fate of their accomplished 
leader, the Prefect turned to Justin once more, and 
addressed him in a bantering tone : " You are a man 
with a tongue in your head, and a professor, it would 
seem, of the genuine philosophy. Tell me, then, I 
pray, do you really believe, that if I have you 
scourged from head to foot, you will straightway go 
up to Heaven?" "Yes," said Justin, "if you have His hope, 
me scourged, I hope to receive the reward promised 
to all those who keep the commandments of Christ : 
for I know, that all who live by this rule shall be the 
friends of God." " You think, then," said the Pre- 
fect, " that you are going up to Heaven to be rewarded 
there ?" " Not only do I think it," answered Justin, 
" but I know it : and that, too, assuredly and beyond 
all doubt." 

The examination was followed by the usual com- 
mand to sacrifice to idols ; which the prisoners unani- 



164 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. n. 

Martyr- mously refusing to do, they were scourged, 13 and soon 

afterwards beheaded. 
scoffing l n this trial, as indeed in all controversies of that 

spirit of 

the day, with Jews or Gentiles, Christianity had to cope 

with that hard, and keen, and exquisitely polished 
irony, which is one of the fruits of a merely intellec- 
tual civilization, and which to simple faith is the 
most horrible of all weapons. Men of the school of 
S. Polycarp avoided it, no doubt, by a holy and 
dignified reserve. The time was come, however, for 
a closer and more deadly struggle with the powers 
of darkness. It is much to Justin Martyr's credit, 
that in his dialogues, apologies, and discussions gen- 
erally, he was sufficiently free-spoken, but not unne- 
cessarily harsh or rude. On the contrary, he answers 
sneers generally with admirable temper ; and a love 
of souls is almost as conspicuous in his writings as 
a zeal for the Truth. His own very gradual conver- 
sion led him to look hopefully upon the various 
stages of approximate belief and partial knowledge. 

di^cip^e!" 3 Among his disciples was Tatian, an Assyrian, who 
wrote with some earnestness in defence of " the 
philosophy of the barbarians," as he styled the Gos- 
pel, but was afterwards led by his austerity of tem- 
per into Gnostic errors. The " Epistle to Diognetus," 
a choice rhetorical production of some Christian 
Apologist who wrote early in the century, has been 
ascribed to Justin Martyr, but on no sufficient 
grounds. 

13 As Justin, it is supposed, citizenship is not certain ; and (2) 

had the right of citizenship, the even if it were, the Roman Magis- 

scourging here mentioned throws trates were not always scrupu- 

a shade of doubt upon the genu- lous about such rights in the case 

ineness of these acts. But (1) his of Christians. 



CH. VI.] THE APOLOGETIC AGE. 165 



CHAPTEK YI. 

THE APOLOGETIC AGE. 

The last third of the second century, the period End of the 
that followed the persecution under Marcus Aure- ° e 
lius, is uneventful so far as external history is con- 
cerned, but full of growing interest with regard to 
matters of discipline and doctrine. 

During the reign of Aurelius, Melito, Bishop of Meiito. 
Sarclis, wrote to the Emperor his Apology for a Faith, 
which had come in, he urged, with the Empire itself, 
but was left without redress to the capricious violence 
of the mob. He was a highly gifted man, and among 
his contemporaries enjoyed the reputation of a Pro- 
phet. He drew up a canon of the Old Testament, 
containing only the received Books of the Hebrew 
Scriptures. The variety of subjects on which he 
wrote 1 is enough to show, that the holy diffidence 
which had produced so long a spell of silence in the 
Church at the beginning of the century, was fast 
giving way before the pressure of the times. 

Claudius Apollinaris, Bishop of .Hierapolis in 9 ther 

tyi • at i T Apologists. 

Phrygia, wrote an Apology ; and was not a little 
troubled by the rising heresy of Montanus. Of 
other names indicative of the awakened intellect of 
the day, it is enough to mention, in this place, Mil- 
tiades, an Apologist ; Hermias, who ridiculed the 
paradoxes of the philosophers ; Athenagoras an 

1 Euseb. iv. 26. 



166 HISTOKY OF THE CHUKCH. [BK. n. 

Athenian philosopher ; Theophilus the sixth Bishop 
of Antioch, who introduced the term trios / Tatian 
a disciple of Justin Martyr, and Bardesanes an ele- 
gant writer of Edessa, both of whom fell into Gnostic 
errors ; Musanus, who strove against the plausible 
error which went under the name of encraty or con- 
tinence; Minucius Felix and Tertullian in North 
Africa ; Irenseus and his disciples ; the writers of 
the Alexandrine School, of whom, as of some others 
above mentioned, there will be occasion to speak 
more particularly in another place. 2 The title 
" Apologetic Age," applied to this period, has to be 
understood in a large sense ; for the controversy with 
heretics was conducted with even greater vigor than 
the defence of the Gospel against the heathen. 
Heathen On the other hand, Heathenism was no longer 

opponents. ° 

content to assail the Faith with the weapons of 
fanatical fury merely, or of a variable state policy. 
Philosophy was awakened to a sense of its own dan- 
ger. 3 Crescens and Fronto endeavored by vile cal- 
umnies to fortify Aurelius with a valid plea for 
persecution. Lucian impartially derided all the 
religions of his times, and found a butt for his satiric 
humor in the zeal of Martyrs and Confessors. Celsus 
confounded Christianity with the dreams of Gnostic 
sects, and, avoiding the ground of vulgar paganism, 
assailed it, now with the light missiles of Epicurean 
indifferentism, now with the heavier metal of the 
Platonic philosophy. As the controversy proceeded, 

2 See Euseb. iy. 21-30; v. 13, (Tertullian, Justin Martyr, Mi- 
18, 19. nucius Felix); also in Bellamy's 

3 The argument for and against Origen against Celsus, and Hum- 
the Gospel, as managed in early phrey's Apologetics of Athenago- 
times, is accessible to English ras. See, also, Oxford Transla- 
readers in Reeves's Apologies tions of the Fathers. 



CH. VI.] THE APOLOGETIC AGE. 167 

the adversaries of the Gospel resorted more and more 
to this method of attack. On the one hand, the 
Christian name could be made to cover an ever in- 
creasing number of absurd and wicked sects ; on the 
other, philosophy, through the influence of the dif- 
fused light of truth, was becoming more intellectual 
and more spiritual than it had hitherto appeared. 
The new Platonic School began to nourish in Alex- New 

• -l \ • Platonic 

andria towards the end of the century. Aminonrus school. 
Saccas, one of its first teachers, was acquainted with 
Christianity. So also was Plotinus, and at a later 
period Porphyry, the latter of whom was hostile to 
the Gospel in proportion as he drew from it his 
noblest and best thoughts. 

But philosophers of this kind belonged to an intel- Apoiioniua 
lectual oligarchy, and had little influence with the ° ya,na " 
people. They were also wonderfully superstitious. 4 
The wonder-working life of Apollonius of Tyana, a 
contemporary of the Apostles, was rescued from 
oblivion by rhetoricians of this school, adorned with 
a profusion of unmeaning miracles, and set up as an 
embodiment of the philosophic perfect man. A 
strict vegetable diet, a pure Attic style, a sententious 
utterance of common places, an attempt to relieve 

4 Porphyrins de Vita Plotini, come to me, not I to them." 
found iaFabricu. JBibliothecGrcec. With all these pretensions, his 
lib. iv. cap. 26. Plotinus pro- high favor with Gallienus and 
fessed to have a god for his the Empress could not obtain for 
familiar ; which was proved when him the gift of a ruined city in 
a certain Egyptian priest of Isis Campania, to establish a Platonic 
attempted to call up the daemon commonwealth: cap. 12. The 
of Plotinus ; for instead of a da?- Christians gloried, therefore, that 
mon a god suddenly appeared, while Platonic wisdom had never 
Vita. Plotin. cap. 10. On the succeeded in founding a single 
strength of this, when one of his town, the words of a few fisher- 
disciples invited him to go with men were becoming a law to the 
him and worship the gods, Plo- whole world. On the new Platon. 
tinus answered, "They should Sch. see Degerando, H. de la Ph il. 



168 HISTORY OF THE CHUECH. '[be:. II. 

heathen worship of some of its grosser abominations, 
a profound contempt for the unenlightened many, 
and an appreciation of the maxim that knowledge is 
power, are prominent features of the ideal thus con- 

The ideal structed in opposition to Christianity. According to 
them, the true sages dwell, surrounded with a cloud 
and armed with superhuman resources, on a height 
inaccessible to the common herd. The soul lives 
af^er death separate from the body, but of its ulti- 
mate destiny it is unwise to inquire. Such was the 
lesson of the Life of Apollonius. 5 The poverty of 
this performance, as compared with the matchless 
Life recorded in the four Gospels, shows that Christ- 
ianity had little to fear from the rivalry of philos- 
ophers. 

Legiofui- In the meanwhile, the Church had a season of 
comparative immunity from political persecution. 
The Emperor Aurelius, moved by a Providential 
deliverance of his army from the Quadi and Marco- 
manni, 6 which the Christians ascribed to the prayers 
of certain soldiers of their own in the "Thundering 
Legion," became, at length, weary of a fruitless per- 
secution, and issued a severe edict against informers. 
That the event referred to awakened a religions feel- 
ing in the mind of the Emperor, there can be no 
doubt. It seems equally certain that his own thanks 

5 Life of Apollonius of Tyana, 6 The story is given in Euse- 

translated by the Rev. Edward bius, v. 5. The name Legie ]■)■■<- 

Berwick. The miracles of Apol- minea was older, however, than 

lonius (as Newman shows in his the alleged event; and Tertnl- 

Apollon. Tyan.) are mere juggling lian's account is qualified by the 

wonders, without dignity and word "perhaps" — " Christ i an o- 

without meaning. After his rum forte militum." See Giese- 

death, his ghost appeared to a ler, § 42, n. 5, and Neander's 

young disciple, but gave him no Ch. Hist. i. 1. 
information. 



minea. 



CH. VI.] THE APOLOGETIC AGE. 169 

were rendered to Jupiter Pluvius. It may easily 
have been, however, that, his mind being restored for 
the time being to something of its early child-like 
faith, 7 he looked more indulgently upon religious 
fervor in general, and was therefore disposed to be 
more tolerant of the peculiar zeal of the Christians. 
For it was the lively faith of the Church, rather than 
its doctrinal system, that seems hitherto to have 
moved his hatred. 

Commodus, whose atrocities sprang from personal commo- 
caprice rather than from any political or religious 180-192. 
principle, was in the main not unfavorable to Christ- 
ians ; and Marcia, his mistress, whom he honored 
almost as an Empress, used her influence in their 
behalf. Notwithstanding all this, there were mar- 
tvrs not a few in this reign. Apollonius, a literary Apoiiomua 

* # ° -*- ' "a martyr. 

man and philosopher of Rome, a Senator by rank, 
was condemned on the testimony of a slave, and 
beheaded, after a noble apology before that strong- 
hold of heathenism, the distinguished body to which 
he belonged. At the same time, the law bearing on 
the subject being administered with singular impar- 
tiality, the wretch who accused him was also put to 
death. 

Septimius Severus, it is said, 8 had been healed of septimius 
a sore disease bv a Christian of the name of Proculus, a. d. 

1 92—211 

afterwards a member of his household ; and had ap- 

7 In the mind of Aurelius, early shall bring in novel religions . . . 

religious feeling had to struggle by which the souls of men may be 

against a hard crust of stoic fa- troubled, let him," . . . etc. He 

talism. It was in this latter spirit hated any thing fervid or moving 

that he declared ; " Whosoever in Religion. For an account of 

shall do any thing to disturb the his religious character, (perhaps 

minds of men with fear of the too favorable,) see Meander's Ch. 

divine power ... let him be ban- History. 
ished," etc. ; or, " Whosoever 8 Tertull. ad Scap. iii. 4. 



170 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [BK. H. 

pointed, a Christian nurse for his son Antoninns. If 
not actually favorable to the Church, he was at least 
indisposed to molest it. But about the middle of his 
reign he found it necessary, as he thought, to prohibit 
the further spread of the Gospel. Proselyting was 
forbidden both to the* Jews and Christians. Finding, 
however, that in spite of his decrees the tide con- 
tinued to rise, the Emperor was at length induced to 

sixth Per- countenance more active measures. The storm that 
ensued fell with most severity upon Palestine and 
Egypt ; but was felt also in North Africa, Home, 
and many other portions of the Church. From 
certain expressions of Tertullian 9 it may be doubted 
whether Severus himself was actively concerned in 
this persecution. It was enough that he allowed it. 
The cruelty of the mob, the complaisance or cupidity 
of magistrates, and the hostility of Jews, heathen, 
and philosophers, would easily do the rest. For to 
other causes of persecution it began now to be added, 
that there were Christians wealthy and weak enough 
to purchase for themselves an exemption from mar- 
tyrdom. Without sacrificing to idols or burning 
incense, they might procure a certificate to the effect 
that they had done so, and might thus remain 

Libeiiatid. unmolested. These were called Libellatici / a class 
that figures largely in the history of Church disci- 
pline during the third century. 

Whole communities, it is said, procured exemption 

9 Blunt's Lectures on the Church and wicked men were responsible. 
of the first three centuries : Mos- He therefore strains a point in 
heim's Commentaries. Tertullian favor of Marcus Aurelius, Severus 
(Apologet. i. 5 and ad Scrip, iii. 4) and others. His language, how- 
is anxious to make out that no ever, merely proves that these 
good Emperor persecuted the Emperors were sometimes favora* 
Christians, and no really good ble to the Christians, 
magistrate ; but that the rabble 



CH. VI.] THE APOLOGETIC AGE. 171 

in this way. It was a kind of evasion as impolitic 
as it was unjustifiable on moral grounds. 10 For it 
not only created a new motive for persecution, but it 
surrounded Christians at all times with a crowd of 
greedy spies and informers, who made a livelihood 
out of their fears and kej.t them in a state of perpet- 
ual torture. 

Some of the particulars of this persecution will Peace of 

n * • • i ^ thirty- 

COme up incidentally m connection with events here- eight 

after to be mentioned. It was followed by a calm 211-249. 
of thirty-eight years, interrupted only by a brief and 
cruel outbreak under Maximin the Thracian, which *-?• 
is reckoned as the seventh of the general persecu- 
tions. During this interval of peace, the sun- 
worshipper Elagabalus wished to blend Christianity 
as well as the religion of Jews and Samaritans, with 
the superstitious worship paid to his god. 11 Alex- 
ander Severus, influenced by his half-Christian 
mother Julia Mammsea, was disposed to admit 
Christ to equal honors in the sacrifices offered to 
Abraham, Orpheus, and Apollonius of Tyana. 12 
Philip the Arabian was still more favorable to 
Christianity ; and it was very generally thought that 
intellectually, at least, he was a believer. 13 

But, as already intimated in the beginning of this Triak 
chapter, the favor or disfavor of princes, and the within, 
presence or absence of external persecutions, were no 

10 A worse evasion (Can. of mutilations, on the part of those 
Aneyra, i.) was, by a previous who claimed to be confessors, 
understanding; with the magis- " Lampridius in Heliogab. 3. 
trates, to undergo a mere sham. 12 Lamprid. in S. Alex., 22, 28, 
torture, or threats of torture, 29, 43, 45, 49. 
without being placed in any real 13 Euseb. vi. 34, 36. His con- 
danger. Shifts of this sort made version is elaborately discussed, 
the Christians more careful in and disproved, in Pagi Breviarium 
insisting upon actual scars, or Pontijic. etc. S. Fabianus. 



172 HISTORY OF THE CHUECH. [BK. H. 

longer the most prominent of the trials of the Church. 
There were difficulties from within, far more formid- 
able. What these were, how they were encountered, 
and by what means and to what extent they were 
finally vanquished, shall be the special theme of the 
remaining chapters of this Book. 



chaptee yn. 

HERESIES AND SCHOOLS. 

church ^ HE twofold struggle between the Gospel and the 
free - Law, and between Faith and a false Gnosis, had been 
in its main elements, and so far as it was a contest 
for supremacy within the Church, substantially de- 
cided long before the departure of the last of the Apos- 
tles. In doctrine, discipline, and worship, the Church 
was free to take her own course; having a creed, 
a polity, and divinely taught sacraments of her own, 
with liberty in building thereupon to avail herself 
of what elements of natural religion she might find 
to accord with this foundation, whether sanctioned 
or not by Judaic prejudices. In the same way with 
jewhhnor regard to the Gnostics, it was perfectly understood 
Gnostic. t k at tne - rg wag a a Q- nos is falsely so called." In de- 
veloping, therefore, a Gnosis, or religious science of 
her own, the Church regarded Gnostic principles 
with horror and aversion. By the end of the first 
century she was Anti-Jewish and Anti-Gnostic in 
heart, and mind, and confession. 

Hence, Judaizing Christians soon drew off into 



CH. VH.] HEEESIES AND SCHOOLS. 173 

obscure, and, so far as the body of the Church was i. Judaist 

. . T . • Sects. 

concerned, uninfluential sects. In the great cities, 
however, and among the mixed multitudes, half 
Christian half Heathen,. the leaven of the circumci- 
sion was still powerful enough to foment factions 
and divisions. The JSTazarenes and Ebionites, men- 
tioned in the first Book of this history, flourished 
chiefly in Palestine. 

The Clementine Homilies, 1 so called, remain to the The ciem- 
present day as proof of a very ingenious effort made 
towards the end of the second century, to fall back 
upon a pretended primitive religion; a "house of 
wisdom," as it were, of which Adam, Enoch, Noah, 
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, should be the " seven 
pillars," Christ also being acknowledged as greatest 
of them all. This system was remarkable for a full- 
blown doctrine of papal supremacy ; 2 James of Jeru- 
salem, however, being placed at its head. To the 
Judaic elements of the system there was added a 
Gnostic theory of emanations in pairs. These Clem- 
entines express the sentiments of the Elxaite school, 
but were probably revamped by some philosophic 
Eoman, in the interest of one or other of the Juda- 
izing factions which troubled the great city. 

Hippolytus gives us more precise information of Eixaites, 
the Elxaites, a Judaic Gnostic sect, a branch of a. d. 220. 
which came to Rome during the pontificate of Cal- 
listus. 3 They made Christ the male, and the Holy 

1 Clementis Eoman. gumferun- the Churches of God established 
fur HomilicE, etc., Gott. 1853. See everywhere." 

Gieseler, § 58 ; Schaff, §59. 3 S. Hippolyti Refut. Chan. 

2 Clement addresses James as Hceresium, lib. ix. 13. The state 
" the lord, and bishop of bishops, of the Roman Church, and the 
ruler of the holy Church of the position of Hippolytus towards 
Hebrews in Jerusalem, and of the Bishops of the city, are more 



174 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. n. 

Ghost the female, in a series of successive manifest- 
ations or incarnations. They were ascetic in their 
habits, bnt differed from most ascetics by enjoining 
early marriage as a duty, and condemning virginity. 
To that numerous class of Christians, whose con- 
sciences were troubled by the sense of post-baptis- 
mal sins, or who were undergoing Church discipline, 
they offered an attractive bait in a new baptism with 
plenary absolution, to be repeated as often as requir- 
ed. This baptism was made extremely solemn and 
impressive. The candidate "was immersed in the 
Name of the Most High, and of His Son the Great 
Baptisms. King, and with invocation of the seven Witnesses^ 
sky and water, and holy spirits, and prayer-angels, 
and oil, and salt, and earth." In the name of these 
they were to renounce all past and future sin. The 
gospel of these Elxaites, "Be converted and bap- 
tized cum toto vestitu" 4 was an offer of free, imme- 
diate, and unconditional pardon to all sinners of 
every sort ; and, at a time when the Church required 
a long catechumenal probation before baptism, and 
a tedious and severe penance for sins committed 
after, it must have proved a formidable rival to the 
orthodox faith. In addition to this, there were pre- 
tensions to supernatural powers ; a secret doctrine 
imparted only to the initiated ; great reverence for 
the Sabbath ; and an affectation of severity and sim- 
plicity of manners. Hippolytus complains that Cal- 
Laxity of listus paved the way for this heresy by his lax ad- 
discipime. m i n i g t ra -ta 0n of the discipline of the Church. It is 

fully treated in ii. 9, and iii. 4, old and putting on the new. The 

of this History. opposite custom of the Elxaites 

4 For baptism iu the Church, was probably meant to signify, 

candidates had to be divested of that they were ready to receive 

their clothing- — putting off the sinners just as they ivere. 



CH. VII.] HERESIES AND SCHOOLS. 175 

more probable, that the activity of Sects of this 
kind, and the attractions they held ont to the mixed 
multitude of half-believers, rendered a strict enforce- 
ment of the canons practically impossible. In the 
same way, then- elaborate and significant ceremonial 
may have had an influence upon the development 
of ritual in the Church. 

Men who started with the assumption common to n. gnosti- 
all the philosophers of antiquity, 5 that evil inheres in 
matter, could not regard matter or the material world 
as a creature of the supreme and only good God. 
Either it must be eternal, or it must be the work of 
an evil power, or it must be the rubbish, so to speak, 
that remained after the framing of the spiritual ple- 
roma, or it must be the result of some negligence or 
accident with which the one absolute and true Being 
had nothing at all to do. Hence the main effort of 
Gnostic speculations. The material world and the evil ^Vowd 
that clings to it must be removed as far as possible 
from that unfathomable and silent Deep, the Fountain 
of all good. Endless genealogies must be framed, 6 of 

5 Even Plato: See Gieseler, § 44, living sphere ofceons, or spiritual 
notes 1-5. The tenets of the Gnos- emanations ; (3) kenoma — the void 
tic sects belong to the history of that lies beyond that sphere ; (4) 
philosophy, rather than of religion, demiurgus — the world-creator ; (5) 
The ancient writers on the subject hyle — matter ; (6) pneumatic, psy- 
are brought together in the Corpus chic, hylic — spiritual, sensuous, 
Hazresiologicuni, Franciscus Oeh- material souls. From Christianity 
ler, Berolini. There is quite a full they borrowed the idea of a Sa- 
account of early heresies in the viour. Dualism is well denned 
History of the Church, (fee, by by Plato: " N"ot by one soul 
Jeremie and others ; and an ex- merely is the world moved, but 
cellent digest in Dr. Schaff s His- by several perhaps, or at all 
tory. and in Robertson's H. of Ch. events by not less than two ; of 

6 The following are the prin- which the one is beneficent, the 
cipal points of the system: (l)the other the opposite, and a framer 
primal Being — iiuthos, the Abyss of the opposite; besides which, 
— 8ige, Silence — or even 6 ova there is also a third somewhere 
uv, nonentity ; (2) pleroma — the between, not senseless, nor irra- 



176 HISTOKY OF THE CHUKCH. [bk. n. 

^on angels, ceons, or emanations, issuing singly or in pairs 
through a descending, widening and deteriorating 
scale ; till at length, in the dim twilight beyond the 
outermost circle of the jpleroma, on the border of light 
and darkness, good and evil, being and no being, we 
find the Demiurgus blindly working: "the nether 
intelligence," the offspring of the lowest aeon, the 
ruler of the darkness, the architect of this material 
world constructing out of " emptiness" and " nothing- 
ness" a huge prison-house; wherein the lowest and 
fallen aeon, the feeblest ray of the world of light, 
groans and struggles for deliverance, finding an ar- 
ticulate voice in the " spiritual" soul of man. For 

The lost the recover}^ of this " lost sheep," Christ the Saviour, 
an aeon of the highest order, comes down into the 
world. As He glides through the aeon-circles He 
forms to Himself a body of ethereal elements ; or on 
His arrival unites Himself for a while to the earthly 
body of Jesus ; or, abhorring all communion with 
matter, assumes a docetic or apparitional body. Once 
on earth, He becomes through the Holy Spirit the 
light-centre of the world. To Him all " spiritual" 
souls are drawn by the gnosis which He gives them ; 7 
" material" or hylic souls gravitate towards matter ; 
" psychic" souls, Jews or ordinary Christians, hover 
betwixt the two. At length, in one way or another, 

salvation the lost ray of supernal light being extricated from the 
slough or prison-house of matter, and united to the 
highest aeon in an everlasting wedlock, the pier o ma 
is rounded off into a complete and consistent whole ; 

tional, nor without self-motion, muzd, the evil Ahriman, and the 

but touching upon both of the intermediate Mithras. 
twain, yet always longing for the 7 This gnosis they represented 

better, and following after it." as a secret tradition, communi- 

The Persians called the good Or- cated only to the initiated few. 



CH. VII.] HERESIES AND SCHOOLS. 177 

matter, or the Jcenoma, finally disappears ; and a tran- 
scendental life, flowing with equal pulse from the 
centre to the circumference, or back again from the 
circumference to the centre, diffuses an unmixed and 
superabundant joy. 

Such, in a general way, was the scheme upon which The Demi- 
the Gnostics labored ; each particular workman, how- 
ever, fashioning it according to his own fancy, and 
adorning it with his own pomp of great swelling 
words. In all its forms, the Demiurge was identified 
with the God of the Old Testament. Whether He 
and His works were to be treated as simply evil, or 
impotently vacillating between the evil and the good, 
would be determined by the extent to which Eastern 
dualism was admitted into the system. For on the Dualism, 
dualistic scheme matter was not a mere void, it was 
an active principle of evil ; and the world, in the 
same way, was not a mere prison-house, but the battle- 
ground, as it were, between the two rival kingdoms of 
light and darkness. 

In the same way, while all Gnostics agreed to Gnostic 

" ' ° morals. 

despise the body, those who held to the dualistic 
belief were in general the most earnest ; and took 
part in the fierce struggle between the two kingdoms 
by rushing into the extreme of Oriental asceticism. 
The Hellenic Gnostics were more indulgent, or more 
ingenious ; and left the fiesh to destroy itself by fol- 
lowing its own will. The filthiness into which some 
of these wretches sank, could have flowed from 
nothing short of demoniacal possession. It was some- 
what inconsistent with their contempt for the world 
and for the body, that they recognized in things 
below an image or adumbration of the supersensuous 
sphere ; so that, to attain any knowledge of the 
8* 



178 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [BK. II. 

world of truth, one has to go up along the path of 
sense and sight. On this principle, both nature and 
the Scriptures were allegorized, but in a purely 
arbitrary manner. 
Gnostic g f ar as Gnosticism was consistent, it was too 

cultus. .... 

speculative and " spiritual to be bound by creeds, 
scriptures, sacraments, or any thing external. 8 As 
it aimed at influence, however, it had to accom- 
modate itself to the " psychical" element in man. 
Hence it copied more or less of the ritual of the 
Two Church. It had a water baptism for the " psychical," 
Baptisms. a bapt i sm f the Sp i rit for the u spiritual." The Lord's 

Supper was rejected by some, because, says S. Igna- 
tius, they believed not in the " flesh" or Incarnation 
of the Lord ; and celebrated with much pomp and 
with blasphemous additions, by others. In fact, while 
a few speculative minds might be content with that 
Gnosis, which they regarded as the sum of all wor- 
ship, others more eager to gain proselytes would 
resort to every art to win the attention and the favor 
Gnosis as of the sensuous multitude. Gnosis, as a philosophy, 
opny. therefore, is to be distinguished from Gnosis as a 
religion. In the former aspect, it was a grand but 
futile effort to fuse fact and fable, poetry and myth- 
ology, philosophy and science, magic and religion, 
into one consistent whole, which should satisfy the 
its merits, spiritual as well as the intellectual wants of man, 
and solve the deep questions which so far neither 
religion nor philosophy had been able to answer. 
This was attempted by a process of intuition, so 
called, which was in fact nothing more than guessing. 

8 For the Gnostic cultus, see Meander's Church History. 



CH. Vn.] HEEESIES AND SCHOOLS. 179 

"Whatever praise, therefore, can be accorded to 
fanciful and ingenious guessing, the better class of 
Gnostics more or less deserve. But as an offset to 
this merit, they originated nothing in morals, reli- 
gion, philosophy, science, or literature, that has stood 
the test of time ; they constructed nothing that has 
been able to hold together. 9 If it be admitted that 
they were the profoundest and most brilliant, it must 
be conceded also that they were the most barren, of 
all the heretics of antiquity. 

Arising, as they did, at a time when the intellect influence 
of the Church was just awakening to a consciousness 
of its strength, — moving moreover in the literary 
sphere, and abounding in bold assertions and brilliant 
generalizations, — they bore undoubtedly a most por- 
tentous aspect to minds of an imaginative and phil- 
osophic turn ; and in this way we can account for 
the attention given to them by so many of the most 
distinguished early Christian writers. But behind 
all this tliere was little of real earnestness or power. 
The system, on the whole, was merely an expiring 
effort of philosophic and poetic paganism, exhibiting 
the brilliant colors of the dolphin as it dies. It was 
the morning mist, as it were, the fog that had settled 
upon the world during the long night of heathen 
darkness, breaking up into gorgeous clouds before Morning 
the Sun of Christianity, reflecting in varied hues the clouds ' 

9 Dr. Schaff, while he seems to thoughts and poetical intuitions." 

"blame the Fathers for represent- The fathers say the same ; only 

ing it as " an unintelligible con- they ascribe the " profound 

geries of puerile absurdities and thoughts and poetical intuitions" 

impious blasphemies," yet grants to the old philosophers and poets 

it to be a system in which from whom they were borrowed, 

" monstrous nonsense and the and give the Gnostics credit only 

most absurd conceits are chaoti- for the" monstrous nonsense." See 

cally mixed up with profound Degerando, H. de la Phil, xx., xxi. 



180 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. n. 

light before winch it fled, and, it may be added, 
carrying off along with it much of the miasma with 
which the spiritual atmosphere had been so long 
infected. For the contest with Gnosticism was of no 
little service to the Chnrch. Christians did not love 
SfSie* ^ ne Old Testament less, when they fonnd that Gnos- 
cimrch. tics abhorred it. Nor did the continued assaults 
upon the Incarnation, or the Creed, or upon the 
authority of one portion or another of the New Tes- 
tament, render them less zealous in the defence of 
those sacred trusts. In the same way, Gnostic 
austerities made the Church look more sharply to 
the grounds of ascetic tendencies within her own 
pale. The great principle, in short, that there is one 
good God who hath made all things good, so that, as 
S. Ignatius expressed it, even bodily acts are spiritu- 
al if done in the Spirit, was more deeply stamped 
into Christian consciousness from the fact that these 
versatile and pretentious heretics so unanimously 
denied it. 
positive To this it may be added, that their claim to a pe- 

influence. *> 1. . , . x . 

culiar gnosis or science, distinguished irom simple 
faith, made the development of Christian theology 
a matter of necessity. 10 The false gnosis could be 
refuted effectually, only by confronting it with a 
genuine gnosis. On the other hand, the Gnostics 
corrupted heathenism. By putting metaphysical 
abstractions, such as mind, word, thought, wisdom, 
jpower, justice, peace, in the place of the old nature- 
gods of the theogonies, they perverted good poetry 
into a dry and unintelligible jargon; and stripped 
Polytheism of that sensuous beauty which was its 

10 Neander, History of Dogmas. 



CH. VII.] HERESIES AND SCHOOLS. 181 

principal attraction. The NeoPlatonic school fell 
into the same mistake. The poetic mythology was 
at least true to nature : that is, to a fallen and corrupt 
nature. The philosophic mythologies of Gnostics 
and ISTeo-Platonists were true to nothing. In help- 
ing, therefore, to expose the absurdities of the older 
systems, they awakened a critical sense by which 
their own absurdities were exploded with the rest. 

Of particular sects, those which had most of the JJaKa" 
Greek element, were most unreal, and on the whole 
most inclined to Antinomianism. Simon Magus, • 
Menander, and Cerinthus have been mentioned 
among the heretics of the first century. 

In the second century, Carpocrates, who probably JJUJ 11 " 
taught in Alexandria about the time of the Emperor G^tics. 
Hadrian, made his aeon-system a cloak for incredible 
abominations. 11 His son Epiphanes died young, and 
was worshipped as a god. Of the same sort with 
the Carpocratians were the Antitactes, Prodicians, 
and many others. 

Basilides and Yalentinus, both Alexandrians, were Basmdes, 

- J AD 1^5 

far more intellectual, and framed systems remarkable 
for brilliant but perverse ingenuity. 12 There is a God 
who is not, and of whom nothing can be said. There 
is a world-seed, a great egg as it were, containing 
within it the germs of a spiritual, psychical, and ma- 
terial development. From this, developed accord- 
ing to numerical proportions, come the Ogdoad and 

11 " Community and equality," 12 For an excellent account of 
(i. e., community of goods, of the tenets and different sects of 
wives, of every thing) they rep- the Alexandrian Gnostics, see 
resented to be " the true divine " Some Account of the Writings 
law, human laws put asunder and Opinions of Clement of Alex- 
"what God hath put together." andria, by John Bishop of Lin- 
Clemens Alex. Stromat. iii. coin." 



182 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. II. 

Hebdomad, with their respective Archons, or world- 
rulers, and the Abraxas, or three hundred and sixty- 
five Heavens : this latter representing God, so far as 
He is manifested. Christ is the nous or highest aeon, 
which united itself to the man Jesus at His bap- 
tism ; in memory of which the followers of Basilides 
celebrated the baptism as the Epiphany on the sixth 
of January. The later Basilideans adopted the views 
of the Docetse, and held it lawful to deny the Name 
of Christ. They were also grossly immoral, and 
♦were much addicted to magic, attributing a sove- 

vaienti- reign efficacy to their abraxas gems. Yalentinus, 

125-140. ' the most ingenious of all the Gnostics, made his seons 
emanate in pairs. His Christy was apparitional or 
docetic, coming into the world through Mary as 
water through a pipe. The sects that sprang from 

shms°" these leaders, especially the infamous Marcosians, 
were a disgrace to humanity, and brought no little 
scandal upon the Christian name. 

ophites. The Ophites, or ISTaassenes, got their name from 
the Ophis, Serpent, — regarding the Serpent that 
tempted Eve as a symbol of Sophia, Wisdom, or of 
Christ Himself. 13 Their peculiarities gave occasion 
to the Heathen to accuse Christians of serpent wor- 
ship. A similar blasphemy of Scripture was found 

sethites, among the Sethites, Cainites, and others of the same 
sort. The world and its order being evil, every thing 
that helps to destroy the world or confound its order 
was regarded as the struggle of the imprisoned celes-' 
tial spark. Hence even the Sodomites and Judas 
Iscariot were by some held in religious honor. 

13 Or, according to others, So- on these Sects, see Bunsen's Hip- 
phia was the defective female polytas, vol. i. p. 35. 
mind. For interesting remarks 



CH. Vn.] HERESIES AND SCHOOLS. 183 

The Syrian or Oriental Gnostics were more decid- Syrian 
edly dualistic in their views, and perhaps more 
hostile to the Old Testament. 

In their practice they were rigidly ascetic. Sa- satuminus 
turninus was the name best known among them. 
His followers, to avoid all contact with the evil 
principle or with the race of evil men, abstained 
from marriage and the eating of flesh. A particular 
interest attaches to the name of Bardesanes of Barde- 
Edessa, once a Christian philosopher and an able 
defender of the Truth. He believed in two eternal 
principles, derived evil from matter, and denied the 
Resurrection. He obtained honor, however, as a 
confessor; and many of his writings, especially his 
elegant treatise on Fate, were highly esteemed in the 
Church. + 

Cerdo, a Syrian who came to Kome early in the cerdo. 
century, seems to have found a starting-point for his 
heresy in the effort to reconcile the Old Testament 
and the New. " The God proclaimed by Moses and 
the Prophets could not be the Father of Jesus Christ. 
For the former is known, but the latter unknown : 
the former is just, merely, the latter is good." 14 

Marcion, a native of Pontus, came to Pome during Marcion. 
the episcopate of Anicetus, and adopted the same 
general views with Cerdo, maturing them, however, 
into a more advanced doctrine and discipline. Be- 
sides the difference between the God of the Old 
Testament and of the JSTew, 15 he found it impossible 
to reconcile Christ coming to Judgment, with the 
Christ of the Gospels ; and therefore was accused of 
making two Christs. As converts from his sect were 

14 S. Hippol. Omn. Hceres. etc. 

15 " The just Creator, and the good God." 



184. HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. n. 

rebaptized on coming into the Church, it is probable 
that he did not use the common form of Baptism. 
He rejected the New Testament, except a corrupted 
copy of the Gospel of S. Luke, and certain portions 
of the Epistles. It is said that towards the end of 
his life he repented of his heresy. 

Apeiies. Apelles, a disciple of Marcion, taught that Christ 
in descending from on high framed a body to Him- 
self out of the four elements, of which in ascending 
again He became divested. This he learned from 
Philumena, a virgin clairvoyants, who lived on invis- 
ible food and had many revelations. About the end 

Hermo- f the century, Hermogenes, a painter of Carthage, 
taught the eternity of matter: an unplastic material, 
out of which God formed, as perfectly as its stubborn 
nature would allow, the soul and body of man. 10 

Tatian. Tatian, a disciple of Justin Martyr, travelled in 
the East after the death of his master, and origin- 
ated the stern sect of the Tatianites. He regarded 
marriage as a corruption, and denied the possibility 
of Adam's salvation. 

To these, and many such like, Hippolytus adds the 

MonoTmus. name of Monoi'mus, an Arabian, who taught that 
"man is the all," and "the principle of all." His 
maxim was ; " Seek not God, or nature, or things 
thereunto pertaining ; but seek thyself from thyself, 
and say : My God is my mind, my thought, my soul, 
my body. Thus thou shalt find thyself in thyself, 
as the one and the whole." 

iv. mahi. It was in the latter half of the third century that 
Gnostic dualism was moulded into its severest form 
by the hand of Mani, an apostate Presbyter it is 

10 For several of these see Tertull. de Praescript. 30-33. 



CH. VII.] HERESIES AND SCHOOLS. 185 

said, who having been a Magian, a Christian, and 
possibly a Buddhist, endeavored to fuse all these 
svstems into one. This world is a battle-ground, a The two 

" . Kingdoms 

confused stru^^le of darkness and lio;ht • the debat- 
able land, as it were, of two great worlds, each 
having its own Lord, and for ever arrayed in irre- 
concilable hostility to one another. 17 Each man is 
an image of that world-wide struggle. In a body 
which is darkness he has a soul which is darkness, 
but a soul of light, also, striving for deliverance. 
Christ and the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of light and 
the Spirit of ether, attract the good soul unto them- 
selves. These notions, adorned with poetical ascrip- 
tions to the sun, and moon, and stars, and with a 
world-system of the most intricate description, were 
accompanied with terribly serious views of the ma- Austere 
lignity of nature, and with an austerity dark and nature, 
hard, though not devoid of a certain moral grandeur. 
The mouth, the hands, the heart, every member and 
every faculty, must be sealed. 18 By silence from all senses 
but good words, by abstinence from all but vegetable 
diet, by hands unstained with money, by a virginity 
absolutely unsullied, the flesh is to be purged, and 

1T Zoroaster, a contemporary of among modern worts : also Faber 
Darius Hystaspes, was the re- on Pagan Idolatry. The innu- 
former of the Magian system. In merable points which Christi- 
the form he gave it, Ormuzd, the anity has in common with Anti- 
light-principle, and fountain-head Christian systems, are industri- 
of good, and Ahriman, the source ously brought together in a spirit 
of darkness and of evil, were hostile to ah religion by Dunlap, 
eternally generated by the infinite Vestiges of t/ie /Spirit History of 
and almighty Essence, Zeruane, Man. 

Akurene, or absolute Time. On 18 " Signaculum oris, signacu- 
the subject of the Barbarian Phi- lum manuum, signaculum sinus." 
losophies, see Diogenes Laertius With these high pretensions they 
among the Ancients, and Tenne- mixed secret abominations, al- 
man's Manual of the History of most incredible. See Augustin. 
Philosophy (translated by Cousin) de Hceres, cap. 46. 



186 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. II. 

the soul of light liberated from its Ipathsome dun- 
geon. To make these maxims more effectual, the 
Manicheans had a discipline and worship modelled 
on that of the Church, but more severe, and in some 
respects more imposing. 19 

There was in this heresy, as in all that have been 
built upon an honest reception of the dualistic prin- 

vitaiity. ciple, an extraordinary vitality. Soon after Mani's 
death, in the last quarter of the third century, it 
began to make its way towards the West ; and by its 
ascetic rigor, its high pretensions, and its affectation 

a. d. 287. of mystery, made converts not a few in Asia Minor, 
Italy, Sicily and North Africa. Towards the end 
of the same century it was prominent enough to 
provoke persecution, at the hand of the Emperor 
Diocletian. 20 Persecuted and crushed at various 
times, it always managed to revive; and in one 
shape or another continued to exist all through the 
middle ages. 

v. sensd- In the meanwhile there was growing within the 

OUSBlAS. 1 

bosom of the Church a more dangerous enemy, 
though not more wicked, than either the Judaic or 
Gnostic heresies. These two, appealing to pseudo- 
spiritual or pseudo-rational proclivities, had assailed 
the real Humanity or proper Divinity of our Lord ; 
so that the success of either would have involved no 
less than a denial of the essentials of Christian faith. 
The contest with them, however, was during the 

J0 Beausobre : Histoire du Man- customs," he feared, might " cor- 

icheisme : on which see Mos- rupt the innoccncy and simplici- 

heim's Criticisms; Hist. Com- ty of Roman manners." Tho 

ment. vol. ii. ringleaders of the heresy were to 

20 Diocletian's edict (Gies. §61, be "cast into the flames and 

n. 19) seems to have been prompt- burned, along with their abomin- 

ed in great measure by hatred of able writings." 
the .. Persians, whose "detestable 



CH. vn.] HERESIES AND SCHOOLS. 187 

second century an external war. The internal strug- 
gle, during the same period, was with enemies that 
appeared on the sensuous side of religion, and ap- 
pealed to the imaginative faith and emotional feel- 
ings, rather than to the sober reason of the times. 

Symptoms of this, it has been already noticed, Sect spirit, 
had early appeared among the Corinthian Christians, 
in an over-estimate of charisms, or spiritual gifts. 
Coveting sensible signs of the operation of the Spirit, 
and despising the common-place virtues of temper- 
ance, charity, and humility, they became mere babes 
in Christ ; and sect-spirit, or schism, one of the inev- 
itable fruits of a carnal mind, 21 became — and to judge 
from S. Clement's Epistle for a long time continued — 
a characteristic of their Church. 

What happened among the Corinthians must have Love of 

xx ° wonders. 

shown itself at times in other places. Love of the 
marvellous is natural to man. But the extraordinary 
effusion of " gifts" in the Pentecostal age, however 
necessary it was for a time, could not but be attend- 
ed with the risk of ministering to this dangerous 
passion ; giving occasion to disorders, which the 
rulers of the Church had to combat with all their 
might. 

In the beginning of the second century, the same chiiiast 

. *? u J 1 doctrine. 

carnal or psychical tendency appears under another 
form. As miracles became less frequent, and " gifts" 
almost disappeared, prophecy grew more precious to 
those who sought either to stimulate or to build up 
their faith ; and the magnificent imagery of the Old 
and ^ew Testaments, so elevating and inspiring to 
sober minds, was converted by the unlearned and 

21 Gal. v. 19, 20. 



188 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bK. II. 

unstable into a sensuous snare. The Millenarian 
theory, a harmless and pleasing speculation to some, 

millennial became to others a sort of intoxication. In its milder 
form it was an opinion, founded on a literal interpre- 
tation of the twentieth chapter of the Apocalypse, 
that the saints risen from the dead at the first resur- 
rection should reign with Christ a thousand years on 
earth, in a state of temporal power and felicity. 
Papias, a disciple of S. John and a great collector of 
oral traditions, but a man of slender wit according 
to Eusebius, embellished this opinion with fanciful 
additions of a very exceptionaole kind. The wicked 
were to serve the righteous during the thousand 
years of their reign. To support its enormous popu- 
lation, the earth was to be endowed with a marvellous 
fecundity. Each vine was to bear a thousand branch- 
es, each branch a thousand clusters, each cluster a 
thousand bunches of grapes, and each grape was to 
yield twenty-five measures of wine. 23 Pomps, and 
splendors, and luxuries were to abound in similar 

New jeru- proportions. Jerusalem was to be rebuilt. Indeed, 
the vision of the sacred city, radiant with every im- 

22 See Routh, Rdiqu. Sacr. vol. clearly the doctrine of the Rexur- 
i. The doctrine was held, but rectiou, in opposition to those 
probably in a more spiritual sense " not really Christians," who 
than here described, by Irenseus, taught that " at the moment of 
Justin Martyr, Melito, and proba- death the soul would be taken 
bly by a majority of the Church right up into heaven." He there- 
teachers of the second century, fore contended, that " not only 
The Alexandrine School, which would there be a resurrection of 
in the third century brought it the dead, but a millennium in Jer- 
into disrepute, were averse to its usalem . . . as all the prophets 
sensuous character (which they have predicted." Dial, cum 
probably exaggerated), but spiri- Tryphon. 80. It has been well 
tualized the text of Scripture into remarked, that as belief in the 
a very intangible meaning. The millennium declined, the notion 
millennium was advocated by of a purgatory took its place. 
Justin M., and probably by See note on this subject to Oxf. 
others, from a desire to bring out Trans, of Tertullian, p. 120. 



salem. 



CH. VII.] HERESIES AND SCHOOLS. 189 

aginable splendor, so impressed itself upon popular 
imagination, that, as some believed, it was actually 
seen for a space of forty days 23 hovering in the air 
just over its future site. 

But the Millenarian dream, tolerated for awhile J^ 1 ^ 0118 
among Catholics, and spreading in grosser forms 
among the heretical Sects, was only one of innumer- 
able symptoms of a great and growing disorder. A 
worse sign still was the flood of religious fictions let 
loose upon the Church at this period. Many of 
these productions were harmless enough, some were 
even edifying. The Shepherd of Hermas, for ex- • 
ample, notwithstanding some questionable phrases, 
is evidently the work of a pious man, who avails 
himself of the garb of fiction without any intention 
to deceive. 24 "We can hardly say as much for the Si- 
bylline Books ; 25 a forgery which Justin Martyr and 
early writers generally appealed to, without suspicion 
or misgiving. The Clementines, a romance already- 
mentioned in this chapter, came out of a great nest 
of similar productions. Thousands of pious frauds, 
in short, Prophecies, Histories, Epistles, Gospels, ^i° u * 
Apocalypses, Testaments, mostly of heretical origin, 26 
but ascribed to Adam, Seth, Abraham, Moses, the 
Apostles, the blessed Virgin, and to various other 
worthies, Jewish, Christian and Heathen, circulated 
through innumerable obscure channels, and minis- 

23 Tertull. adv. Marcion. iii. Lee on Inspiration ; and Wake's 
25. Apostol. Fathers. 

24 This work, and the Epistle . 25 Sibyllina Oracula, etc., Ser- 
of Barnabas, are placed on very vatii Galhei, etc., etc. Amstelo- 
good authority in the first cen- dami, 1689. 

fury : the argument against their 2C Epiphanius mentions as many 

early origin being of no great as six thousand, °f Gnostic au- 

force. See Gieseler, Church Hist, thorship. Irenaeus speaks of 

§ 35 (Smith's Am. ed.). See, also, them as countless. 



190 



HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. 



[bk. n. 



The En- 
cratites. 



Excesses 
rebuked. 



tered to the fleshly enthusiasm from which they 
sprang. 

To perils of this kind must be added a growing 
fondness for the ascetic or encratite 27 virtues. Vir- 
ginity could not long be content with the qualified 
praise bestowed upon it by S. Paul. Second mar- 
riages were allowed to human infirmity, but, in an 
age that called for extraordinary and heroic virtues, 
infirmity was not apt to be regarded with particular 
favor. The martyr spirit 28 was immoderately ap- 
plauded : on the other hand, denial of the faith at 
the hour of trial, and even attempts at evasion, were 
likely to be considered by many unpardonable sins. 
Excesses in this direction did not go, however, 
entirely unrebuked. The martyrs at Lyons, as we 
have seen, and it may be said the School of S, John 
in general, were distinguished by a noble moderation ; 
by encraty, or temperance, in the truest sense of the 
word. 29 But as persecution became more virulent, 

the Church is best shown in the 
50th Apostolic Canon : — " If a 
bishop, a priest, or a deacon, or 
any ecclesiastic abstain from mar- 
riage, from flesh, or from wine, 
not for practice in self-denial, but 
from contempt, forgetting that 
God made every thing very good, 
that He made both the male and 
the female — in fact, even blas- 
pheming the creation: he shall 
either retract his error, or be de- 
posed and cast out of the Church. 
A layman also shall be treated in 
like manner." In the same way, 
clerical ascetics were compelled 
to eat flesh and drink wine once, 
that their abstinence on other oc- 
casions might not be attributed 
to a belief that these things were 
evil in themselves. Ancyra, Can. 
14. 



2T The name Encratites (from 
cncrateia, continence, temper- 
ance) covers a great many sects ; 
and may properly be tised as a 
generic term. 

28 Or rather the act of martyr- 
dom; for it was a symptom of 
the sensuous tendency, that the 
word martyr, which applies to all 
who bear a true Christian wit- 
ness before men, came to be re- 
stricted to a small and not in all 
cases exemplary class. 

29 Among the fragments at- 
tributed to S. Ignatius, we find 
the following: — Virginitatis ju- 
gum nemini impone. Periculosa 
quippe res est, et servatu diffi.- 
cilis, quando necessitate fit. Ju- 
nioribus ante nubere permitte, 
quam cum scortis corrumpantur. 
But the general sound feeling of 



CH. vn.] HEEESIES AND SCHOOLS. 191 

enthusiasm more lively, and especially as the phi- 
losopher's cloak, the badge of a prond austerity, was 
more and more seen in the Church, the line between 
proper self-discipline and intolerant severity was 
soon obliterated, or at least disregarded. 

Tatian, a converted Philosopher, and for some time Tatianites. 
an associate of Justin Martyr at Borne, was content 
during the lifetime of the latter to indulge a certain 
severity to himself, without making his own practice 
a rule of obligation for others. Afterwards he trav- 
elled in the East and fell into Gnostic errors. The 
sects that adopted or developed his notions (Tatian- 
ites, Severians, from names of their leaders ; or, 
Encratites, Puritans, from their professions of conti- Pm-itani. 
nence, temperance and pure religion), spread through 
all parts of the East and West. They condemned 
matrimony, abstained entirely from flesh and wine, 
and some of them (Hydroparastatas, or Aquarians) andothera 
forbade the use of the latter, even in the Eucharist. 
The Apotactites, renouncers of the good things of 
this world, Apostolics, imitators of primitive poverty, 
Saccophori, scrip-bearers, are still later varieties of 
the same sensuous spirit, 30 disguised under a thin veil 
of ostentatious simplicity or severity of manners. 

Among the idolatrous nations of antiquity, the vi. moh- 
Phrygians were distinguished for those ungovernable 
transports of sensuous enthusiasm, which S. Paul 
justly lays to the charge of heathenism in general. 
"Ye know," says he to the Corinthians, "that ye 
were Gentiles, carried away unto these dumb idols, 

30 The theoretic notions of some independent power; and (most 

of these sects were less popular offensive of all to the common 

than their austere manners. Thus Christian feeling) a belief that 

dualism was prevalent among Adam was hopelessly damned, 
them; the doctrine of Satan's 



192 



HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. 



[BK. II. 



Phrygian 

ecstacy. 



Cory- 
bantic 
phrensy. 



Phrygian 
Christians, 



The old 

evil 

returns. 



even as ye were led." This " carrying away' 5 was 
known under the name of ecstacy. It could be 
brought about by loud shouts, piercing cries, and 
even by the clang of instrumental music. 31 In addi- 
tion to these, however, arts were employed not unlike 
the " mesmerism" and " spiritualism" of modern 
times. Accordingly, at certain seasons, the Phry- 
gian population, male and female, especially the 
latter, excited themselves into fits of Corybantic 
phrensy, under the influence of which they exhib- 
ited those psychical phenomena which, wherever 
doctrine and discipline are subordinated to passion, 
are still familiar to the experience of the religious 
world. 

When the Phrygians were converted to Christian- 
ity, this sensuous spirit seems to have departed for a 
season. The Gospel gave food for the mind, as well 
as a stimulus to the affections. 32 It transformed the 
wild irregularity of religious impulse into the de- 
cency and order of religious life. Society was not 
only cleansed : it was clothed, as it were, and restored 
to its right mind. 

But about the middle of the second century, symp- 
toms of the old malady began to reappear. It was a 



31 " Tympana tenta tonant palmis 
et cymbala circum 
Concava, raucisonoque minan- 

tur cornua cantu, 
Et Phrygio stinmlat numero 
cava tibia mentes ;" etc. 
Lucretii, de i?. K ii. 620. 
32 The Westminster Review, 
(No. cxliii.), in a very narrow- 
minded article on Christian Re- 
vivals, accuses the whole early 
Church of fostering these excite- 
ments. It forgets that Truth 
was always put foremost by 



Church teachers as the sanctify- 
ing power ; and that Truth was 
proclaimed, not in a popular, 
hortatory way, but in a sober, 
argumentative style, which ap- 
peals to the understanding even 
more than to the affections. To 
test the question, let any one try 
to get up a revival (in the Re- 
viewer's sense of the word) by 
reading to people the Sermon on 
the Mount, the Epistles of S. 
Paul, or any of the homilies of 
the early Fathers. 



CH. YII.] HEEESIES AND SCHOOLS. 193 

time undoubtedly of general excitability. Miracu- 
lous powers still lingered in the Church, or were 
still fondly cherished in popular imagination. There 
was a presentiment of the end of the world near at 
hand. Wild dreams of millennial glories were fondly 
listened to, and generally encouraged. Under these 
circumstances, a little flock ' of simple Christians 
gathered for devotional exercises in some retired 
spot — in a cemetery, perhaps, or around the tomb 
of an honored martyr, — and engaged, it may have 
been, in fasting or in watching, is suddenly start- 
led from its sobriety by one of its members falling 
into a trance. The " ecstacy" is accompanied with 
wild babblings and rapturous demonstrations. The 
subject of it, while in the trance or on awaking, has 
a dream to tell, a wonderful and transporting vision. 
The thing soon becomes a decided epidemic. 33 It 
speeds from man to man, from congregation to con- 
gregation. The Clergy at first can make little of it. Epidemic 

o ~ cv phrensy. 

Afterwards, as they perceive the danger, they strive 
to check the contagion, to dispel the delusion. But 
their efforts are all in vain. Enthusiasm degenerates 
so easily into self-deception, and self-deception is so 
rapidly corrupted into a half-unconscious effort to 
draw in others, that to unveil a lying wonder is 
often the surest way for a time to increase the infatu- 
ation of the multitude who have been deluded by it. 

Montarius, a convert from heathenism, and once, Montana* 
it is said, a Priest of Cybele, is commonly cited by 
the ancients as the author of the Phrygian phrensy ; 
bringing it about in connection with two prophet- 

33 The resemblance of this ec- ian de animd, 9. See also Miin- 

etacy to mesmeric phenomena is teri, Primord. .Eccles. Afric. cap. 

pointed out by Gieseler, in Tertull- xxii. 
9 



194 



HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. 



[bk. n. 



Maximilla, 
Priscilla. 



Theory 
of devel- 
opment. 



The end 
near. 



Greater 

strictness 

needed. 



Encratlte 

notions 

adopted. 



esses, Maximilla and Priscilla, by artful devices of 
his own. It is far more probable that he was origin- 
ally a victim of it. Sharing in the common delusion, 
he had the tact and intellectual skill to become its 
interpreter and director. 

The Church, he reasoned, in growing older, ought 
to grow wiser and more sober. Patriarchal times 
had been the infancy of Religion, Judaism the child- 
hood, Pentecost the glowing and exuberant youth. 
Each of these periods had been inaugurated by signs ; 
each had been followed by a development of doctrine, 
and by a tightening of the bands of discipline and 
morals. Now, a new and more spiritual era is mani- 
festly approaching. The world is nodding to its fall. 
The powers of evil are rallying their forces for the 
great and decisive battle. The Holy Ghost, the 
Paraclete promised to the Apostles, who has par- 
tially manifested Himself in the wonders of Pente- 
costal times, is coming upon the Church with a 
mightier demonstration of spiritual power. Youth 
is settling into manhood. With new wonders, then, 
new revelations, new knowledge, there must be a 
new girding up of the loins of the Church mind ; a 
stricter discipline, a more perfect organization, a 
more complete subjection of the flesh to the in- 
spiring and energizing Spirit. 34 

Hence an adoption at once of all the encratite 
notions current at that day. Second marriages, and 
even all marriages not solemnized in Church, were 
regarded as adultery. Absolution, especially for 



34 The views of Montanus come brings out finely the notion of 

to us through the medium of Ter- development as opposed to custom 

tullian's vigorous mind ; who in or prescription, 
his tract, de Virgin, veland. 1, 



CH. VII.] HERESIES AND SCHOOLS. 195 

mortal sins, was to be at least grudgingly accorded. 
To avoid persecution was to fall from the faith. For 
one Lent they had three, besides other fasts, half 
fasts, and seasons of dry food only. 35 Some abstained 
altogether from flesh and wine. All professed to go 
far beyond the practice of the Church, in sobriety 
of dress and of manner, in condemning amusements, 
in cultivating a rigid and marked austerity in all the 
relations of daily life. 

In the same way the Millenarian theory, and other chiiiast 
notions of a stimulating kind, clustered around adopted. 
Montanism by a natural and irresistible affinity. 
Pepuza, a town of Phrygia where Maximilla began 
her prophetic career, was venerated as the site of 
the Heavenly Jerusalem. The prophets kept excite- 
ment at fever heat by predictions of wars, persecu- 
tions, and of a great and final judgment immediately 
impending ; predictions which signally failed in this 
instance, but which none the less served their pur- 
pose for a time. 

As the Clergy quite unanimously rejected the new Ministr y 
doctrine, it was necessary for Montanus to organize 

35 See Natalis Alexander, torn, when abstinence was practised 

v., dissertat. iv. ; Kaye's Tertulli- till 3 o'clock. Among the Catho- 

an ; Bingham's Antiquities ; Bev- lies, however, these observances 

eridge, Can. Cod. lib. 3. de Jejun. were " of choice not of com- 

Qiiadrages. It is probable from mand," which gave Tertullian oc- 

Tertull. de Jejun. ii., de Orat. xiv., casion, in his sharp way, to twit 

and from Irenasus ap. jEuseb. v. the Catholics with inconsistency : 

24, that the only fast generally viz., that they observed more 

obligatory (except before baptism than they were willing to enjoin: 

or ordination) was on Good Fri- de Jejun. ii. The arguments, by 

day, Easter Eve, or (Cotistitut. the way, which he puts in the 

Apostol. v. 14) the whole of Pas- mouths of Catholics against the 

sion-week. The forty days of stricter views of the Montanists, 

Lent were observed, however, are precisely those which are em- 

with more or less of strictness : ployed in modern times against 

as also the station-days (Wednes- the excessive legality of Roman 

day and Friday) of each week, Catholic fasts. 



196 



HISTOKY OF THE CHUECH. 



[bk. n. 



a ministry of his own. 36 This he did consistently 
with his principle (that the Catholic Church, name- 
ly, was psychical and carnal, and therefore imperfect) 
by ordaining Patriarchs and Cenones over the heads 
of the Bishops ; thus degrading the successors of the 
Apostles, says S. Jerome, to the third rank in the 
Ministry. As his ministry stood on the prophetic, 
rather than the sacerdotal basis, he could also con- 
sistently with his principles admit women to it; 
prophetesses 37 being known in all the early ages. 
The assertion that Montanus believed himself to 
conscious. De the Paraclete, probably arose from the distinction 
commonly made between the Phrygian inspiration, 
so called, and the inspiration attributed by the 
Church to Prophets and Apostles. In the latter, 
neither reason, will, nor any thing pertaining to 
man's integrity, is abolished or superseded. But 
Montanus professed to be an unconscious organ of 
the Spirit. 38 The Spirit, throwing him into an ec- 
stacy, into an irrational, impersonal, irresponsible 
condition, breathed through him as a musician 



Females 
admitted. 



The ec 
stacy un 



36 The Montanists also fell back 
upon the inherent kingly priest- 
hood of the private Christian : 
Tertull. de ex/iortat. ca.stitat. vii. : 
in which he argues, that, as lay- 
men partake of the priestly office 
and do priestly acts (et offers, et 
tinguis, et sacerdos es tibi solus), 
they ought also to come under 
the strict discipline of priestly 
lives. It may be observed, that 
this priestly character of the con- 
gregation enters into all true Lit- 
urgies; but was more apparent 
in the early Church, because the 
offerings (first fruits, etc.) were 
more tangible: the distinction 
between the old Law, and the 



new, in this respect, being, ac- 
cording to Irena?us, iv. 18, 2, 
that what was then done in a 
servile way is now done freely : 
quippe cum jam non a servis, sed 
a liberis offeratur. See Gieseler, 
§ 53, notes 5, 16. 

3T Thiersch, the Irvingite his- 
torian, distinguishes in like man- 
ner between teaching and pro- 
phesying — the one being prohib- 
ited to women, the other not. 

38 The difference between the 
orthodox and the Montanist idea 
of inspiration is well treated in 
Lee, on the Inspiration of H. S., 
Lect. v. ; see, also, Kaye's Justin 
M. chap. ix. 



CH. VII.] HERESIES AND SCHOOLS. 197 

through a flute; so that the phrase, thus saith the 
Prophet, would be no more proper in his case, than 
to say, thus says the mouth, or thus writes the pen, 
or thus plays the harp. 

Other absurdities and blasphemies attributed to character 

- 1 - of Mon- 

Mont anus, are so manifestly taken from vague ru- tanus. 
mor, or from hostile interpretation, that little credit 
can be given them at the present day. It seems 
improbable also, that he was such a simpleton as 
is sometimes represented. Respectable powers of 
mind, great austerity of life, and even practical 
good sense within a certain range, may co-exist with 
absurdities bordering on insanity ; and the consis- 
tency of Montanism in itself, as well as the strong 
and broad hold it gained in large portions of the 
world, seem to bear witness to the intellectual abil- 
ity, and in the popular sense of the word, to the sin- 
cerity of its author. 

At all events, Montanism became the popular spread of 

1 PITT • • I ttle neW 

heresy 01 the day. Its encratite principles recom- prophecy 
mended it to some ; its fervid enthusiasm carried 
away others. Phrygia and Galatia were overrun 
by it. The light of the golden candlestick of Thya- 
tira was extinguished by it for nearly a century. 
From the East in flew swiftly to the West ; and in in the 

West. 

Rome one of the Bishops towards the end of the cen- 
tury, most probably Yictor, was disposed for awhile 
to look favorably upon it, and indeed sent letters of 
peace to the new prophets. In North Africa it took 
deeper root. "Wherever it spread, its followers, call- 
ing themselves " spiritual," and despising the Cath- 
olics as " carnal," or abhorring them as enemies of 
the Spirit, were distinguished by a severity and sim- 



198 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [BK. II. 

plicity of life which disposed many earnest men to 
look favorably upon them. 
JnI"lis^ ti " ^° m ighty a movement in the sensuous direction 
reaction. as that of the Montanist, Encratite, and even Gnos- 
tic Sects (for the Gnostics became sensuous as soon 
as they formed into Sects), could not fail to arouse 
the elements of a powerful reaction. Among the 
Montanists themselves, there arose a party holding 
views which were afterwards known in the Church 
as Sabellian. 39 These, however, were probably men 
ignorant of theology, who, absorbed in their doctrine 
of the Paraclete, confounded with Him the other 
Persons of the Trinity. 
The Aiogi, The Alogi, deniers of the Logos of S. John's Gos- 

Monarch- ? ,. -, t -, 

ians. pel, were inclined to doubt the reality oi spiritual 
gifts, and to reject the Apocalypse and Gospel of S. 
John. 40 In fact, the doctrine of the millennium, the 
mission of the Spirit, and the mystery of a manifold 
Divine operation in the human heart, had been so 
vilified by the sensuous trail of heretical interpreta- 
tion, that impatient minds were naturally disgusted. 
A skeptical spirit had also been provoked by over 
sharp distinctions between the Persons of the Trinity. 
The doctrine of Subordination was so maintained by 

Tritheism. some, as to give a handle for the charge of Tritheism. 
To avoid errors on this side, many were led to con- 
tend for the doctrine of the divine Monarchy, either 
by denying the divinity of Jesus Christ, or by mak- 
ing Him a mere temporary embodiment or manifes- 
tation of the Father. Among those who carried 

39 Tertullian de Prcescript. Hce- that the Father and the Son are 

ret, 52, mentions two sects of one Person. 

Montanists, those who followed 40 S. Irenseus, iii. 11, cited in 

Proculns, and those who followed Gies. § 48. 
JEschines ; the latter maintained 



CH. VII.] HERESIES AND SCHOOLS. . 199 

this reaction to the extreme, Theodotus the Tanner, 
Theodotus the Money-changer, and Artemas or Arte- 
mon, were particularly prominent. They rejected 
the divinity of Christ. From a notion of one of 
them, 41 that Christ was inferior in the priesthood to 
that mysterious personage, Melchizedek, his follow- 
ers got the name of Melchizedekians. 

Praxeas, coming to Rome from the East, at the Praxeas, 

' ° , -,-, -, Patrip as- 

time when Yictor was favoring the new Prophets, sians. 

by his arguments and representations undeceived the 
Eoman Pontiff; but afterwards reasoned himself into 
a heresy more ruinous and hardly more rational than 
the one he had exposed/ 2 In explaining the doctrine 
of the Trinity, possibly with a view to cut away the 
ground from under the Montanist delusion, he laid 
himself open to the charge of Patripassianism ; con- 
tending that He who suffered on the cross was not in 
substance only, but in person, one with the Father. 

In this way the philosophizing spirit came back Rationai- 
into the Church, where it secured a foothold, from 1S 
which it was not dislodged for several ages. 43 Indeed, 
it has never been dislodged : for the habit of explain- 
ing the mysteries of the Gospel having once come in 
on the side of error, it was found necessary to employ 
it on the side of Truth. The Church of Pome was in Rome, 
particularly troubled in this way. Noetus, who taught 
in Asia Minor about the end of the second century, 

41 Tertullian de Prcescript. Hce- silent with regard to the heresy of 
res. 53. Praxeas. 

42 it p rax eas, in Rome, accom- **" 43 An anonymous writer in En- 
plished two works of the devil: seb. v. 28, dwells much on the 
he cast out prophecy and brought fondness of these heretics for syl- 
in heresy ; he banished the Para- logisms, and for Aristotle, Theo- 
clete and crucified the Father." phrastus and Galen. They were 
Tertullian adv. Praxeam, c. 1. Ter- much addicted also to mathemat- 
tullian intimates that Victor was ical studies. 



200 HISTOEY OF THE CHUECH. [BK. n. 

held the same view as Praxeas in a more philosophic 
shape ; and Epigonus and Cleonienes, his disciples, 
preaching in the imperial city, were more or less fa- 
vored by Zephyrinns and Callistns. How far these Ro- 
man Bishops were implicated in the heresy, it is hard 
to say. "With the Artemonites on one side denying 
the divinity of Christ, and with the Patripassiaus on 
the other exalting His divinity at the expense of His 
personality, they were certainly in a difficult position. 
It is to their credit, that Theodotus and Artemon were 
promptly condemned. 

sabeiiius. The same promptitude was shown in the case of 
Sabellius, who nourished also in the first half of the 
third century, and expounded the doctrine of the 
Trinity in a way which has proved as difficult to ex- 
plain as the original doctrine itself. The sum of his 
teaching would seem to be this : God is a monad ex- 

Monad vanded into a triad." As man is one, yet we distill- 

and Triad. •*■ 

guish in him the body (that is, the whole frame cor- 
poreal and spiritual), and the soul (which again stands 
for the whole man), and the spirit (of which the same 
is to be said) ; or as the sun is one, yet we distinguish 
the round body, and the light, and the heat : so God 
is one, yet the Father, the Son and the Spirit may 
each express in His own way the fulness of the ex- 
panded or contracted Godhead. Like all analogies 
of the kind, this is capable of being interpreted in 
many different senses. It may stand for a Trinity 
of modes, 45 a Trinity of emanations, a Trinity of three 
divine energies. 46 If rigidly pressed, it would cer- 

44 S. Athanas. c. Arian. Or. iv., traction and expansion — systole 

12, 13; for other statements of his and ektasis. 

doctrine see Gieseler, Oh. H. § 60, 45 S. Basil, ep. 210, 214. 

n. 10 (Smith's Am. ed.) In the 46 JZpiphan. Hceres. lxii. 1. 
monad there was a power of con- 



CH. VE.] HEEESIES AND SCHOOLS. 201 

tainly lead to a denial of the proper personality of 
the Son and of the Holy Ghost. And this last conse- 
quence Sabellius seems to have accepted. He admit- 
ted prosopa, persons, but only in the dramatic sense ; 
characters, to be put on or put off, for particular dis- 
pensations. In the effort, however, to give a rational 
account of his doctrine on the positive side, he doubt- 
less encountered difficulties, which it was easier to 
evade by illustrations than to meet and vanquish by 
intelligible definitions. 

Somewhat later than Sabellius, Beryllus Eishop Beryiius. 
of Bostra in Arabia taught, that Christ before the 
Incarnation had no personal existence, 47 and that He 
has no proper divinity of His own, but only that of 
the Father dwelling in Him. He denied also the 
existence of a human soul in Christ, the indwelling 
Deity supplying its place. When confuted by Origen a. d. 244. 
on this latter point, in an Arabian Synod holden near 
the middle of the third century, he also abandoned 
the former error. 

Somewhat later still, Paul of Samosata Bishop of raui of 
Antioch taught a kind of deification of the blameless 
man Jesus, by an impersonal, indwelling Logos. 48 

While many in this way were seduced by a phi- J™ 0LS 
losophizing spirit into open heresy, there were innu- p*J TIES 
merable others who speculated to the utmost limit 
of the rule of faith, and perplexed simple souls by 
subtle distinctions and analogies. 49 The Logos of S. 
John was to philosophic minds particularly sugges- 

47 Euseb. vi. 33. Testimonies of the Ante-Nicene 

48 See Book iii. ch. 5. Fathers, and Hagenbach, History 

49 On the subject of the remain- of Doctrines. In the latter are 
der of this chapter there are concise summaries of the results 
many modern writers of first-rate of German criticism. See also 
ability : see particularly Burton, Neander, Hist, of Christ. Dogmas. 

9* 



202 



HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. 



[bk. n. 



tive. 



God silent might be distinguished from God 



School of 
progress. 



speaking, or the Word immanent in the Father from 
the Word forthgoing into creation or redemption, in 
such a way as to express any amount of vital truth, or 
to cover any amount of dangerous error. The same 
may be said of the theories of emissions, processions, 
emanations, expansions, and the like, by which the 
relation of the Son to the Father was sometimes 
more clearly than satisfactorily explained. Justin 
Martyr, with his contemporaries Athenagoras and 
Tatian, Theophilus of Antioch, the Alexandrine 
school, and in the West Hippolytus and Tertullian, 
were among the most active in these efforts to give 
what may be called a philosophic expression to the 
Faith commonly received. On the other hand, the 
cautious, traditionary, reverential school, which 
lingered to the end of the second century in the 
person of Irenseus, 60 was wary of the use of scientific 
terms, and taught the doctrine of the Trinity in the 
language of Scripture and the Creeds. Of the 
conserva- others also it may be said, that the terms in which 

tive spirit. J 

they taught may be distinguished from those in 



Tradition- 
ary 
school. 



60 " If any one shall ask, How 
was the Son produced from the 
Father ? — we answer, No one 
knows . . . save alone the Father 
who begat and the Son who was 
begotten." S. Iren. adv. Hares. 
ii. 28. In the same way he ridi- 
cules those theological obstetrici- 
ans, who professing in one breath 
that " His generation is indescri- 
bable," go on in the next to de- 
scribe His generation and forth- 
going, by such analogies as " a 
word emitted from a thought." 
" That a word is emitted from a 



thought is what everybody 
knows. It is therefore no great 
discovery they make who talk 
about emissions, and apply the 
term to the only-begotten Word 
of God ; likening Him whom they 
call indescribable and unutterable 
. . . to a word uttered or emitted 
by man." In other words, Ire- 
nseus saw the fallacy, common to 
thinkers of all ages, of imagining 
that by giving new names to 
tilings they shed new light upon 
them. 



CH. vn.] HERESIES AND SCHOOLS. 203 

which they explained* 1 the latter being as a general 
rule more open to suspicion. 

The traditionary ground, however, could not be Faith and 

•* ° J 1 . knowledge 

retained, without at all events a thorough examina- 
tion. Christianity as a Truth, or rather as the Truth, 
offered a constant challenge to the philosophic world. 
But to maintain that challenge she was forced in a 
measure to adopt the language of the Schools, and 
to answer a multitude of questions which the mass 
of simple believers would never have thought of ask- 
ing. As Origen intimates, the generality of those 
who called themselves Christians, knowing nothing 
but Jesus Christ and Him crucified, thought they 
had the whole Logos in the Word made flesh. A 
lower class (the Ebionites or Nazarenes) thought they 
had the whole when they recognized Jesus as the Son 
of David. But the higher man rises in the intellec- 
tual scale, the deeper is the significance of that 
question, "What think ye of Christ ? It was a Questions 
matter of simple necessity, then, that the Truth tinctions. 
revealed to the Church should undergo a theoretic 
scrutiny, and that distinctions which readily occurred 
to speculative minds should be at first overlooked, or 
dimly apprehended, and should afterwards, before 
they were settled, 62 give rise to variations of expres- 

51 Even Irenreus is accused (by person, and office were generally 
Duncker and others) of hopeless apprehended, enabled philosophic 
self-contradiction, because his con- minds to hold to the personality 
stant assertion of the equality of of the Son. The same is to be 
the Father and the Son can be said of the analogies — such as fire 
coupled with such phrases, as lighting fire, thoughts emitting 
'• the Father is above all, being words, etc., etc. Among the terms 
Himself the head of the Son." finally adopted in the Church 

52 Some theories served as a were the trias of Theophilus, the 
scaffolding, so to speak : e. g. the trinitas of Tertnllian, the eternal 
doctrine of subordination, which, generation of Origen : the homo- 
before the distinctions of substance, ousion had a harder struggle, being 



204 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. II. 

sion, or even to mutual distrust and misapprehen- 
sion. 

two offices The Church, in fact, had two works before her. 

church. The one was to hold the simple Creed. The other 
was to frame those noble instruments, the Latin and 
Greek tongues, into a fitness for the expression of all 
that the Creed contains. The latter task devolved 
upon the Schools ; the former upon the Church itself 
— upon the common sense, that is, of believers as a 

Freedom body. To meet both requirements, fixed limits of 

ofopmion. kgi'gf were essential ; but within those limits a rea- 
sonable freedom of private speculation. 53 Accord- 
ingly, amid all the uncertainties arising from illusive 
analogies or inadequate definitions, three points at 
least remained fixed in the general consciousness of 

„ A the Church. God is one : Christ is God : Christ is 

Fixed 

limits of a Person distinct from the Person of the Father. 
Within those limits, which in ordinary teaching 
were respected even by those who in their larger 
flights of speculation seemed to disregard them, no 
little freedom was allowed. But when those limits 
were transcended by any teacher, however eminent 
iii his position or distinguished for his abilities ; 
when, in other words, either the proper divinity or 
the distinct personality of the Son of God was 
denied; then the churchly and orthodox instinct 
made itself felt. In the same way, the undeviating 
direction of belief was seen in the fact, that the drift 
of all discussion was to bring out more fully and 

much favored by the Sabellians, tial orthodoxy of the ante-Nicene 

and asociated more or less with fathers : Petayius, the learned 

notions of division or expansion. Jesuit, de Theologicis Doc/maticis, 

See Hagenbach, § 40-46. impugns it. More recent writers 

53 Bishop Bull,' Defensio Fidel are found in countless numbers 

Nieamm, champions the substan- on either side. 



CH. VII.] HERESIES AND SCHOOLS. 205 

more fairly, against the Gnostics, the real and per- 
fect hnmanity of onr Lord. 

In points of secondary interest there was equal Minor 
activity of mind, with more room for philosophizing. 
The Apologist naturally undertook to answer the 
many subtle questions, with which his accomplished 
predecessor the Sophist had wearied himself to little 
or no purpose. Hence the origin of evil, the eternity 
of matter, the nature of spirit and of body, or of souls, 
angels, demons / and, in fact, a multiplicity of prob- 
lems, physical or metaphysical, were answered by 
gnesses more or less ingenious, and more or less sup- 
ported by texts of Scripture interpreted according to 
the science of the times. 54 At the bottom of all this 
there was a real thirst for knowledge. There was 
something too of the old ambition of the Sophists : 
a desire to appear to know every thing, or perhaps a 
more creditable wish, though not more reasonable, 
that the Church should be shown to have the keys 
to all kinds of science. From whichever cause it 
came, the passion for opening mysteries soon passed spirit of 

i inquiry. 

the bounds of moderation among a large class of 
teachers ; leading in all the great schools to a bias 
more or less heretical, and preparing the way for a 
long and deadly conflict with new shapes of evil. 

But the bringing out of a true Christian gnosis 
from the rich stores of Revelation was none the less Three 
a real and necessary task ; towards the fulfilment of schools, 
which each great division of the Church was led by 
a sure instinct to do its own part. The more practi- 
cal West, headed by Rome and North Africa, directed The west, 
its attention mainly to questions of Church life ; and 

64 See Mosheim's Commentaries, art. on Orisren. 



206 



HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. 



[bk. n. 



Home. 



The East. 



in theology was more solicitous to guard the tradi- 
tional belief, than curiously to explore its philosophic 
meaning. Irenseus, in the spirit of the school of 
Polycarp, appealed to the tradition, 55 or common 
teaching, of the Apostolic Churches. Tertullian, in 
like manner, laid no little stress on prescription, and 
on the rule of faith, " una omnino, sola immobilis 
et irreformabilis." In controversy, however, with 
Praxeas and the patripassian heresy, he was driven, 
as usual in controversy, into the erection of those 
hastily formed defences which may be called the 
field-works of theology : 56 theories, which crumble 
of themselves as soon as they have served their 
temporary purpose. Rome, being about equally 
beset by the patripassian and the subordination 
doctrine, kept in the main a steady balance between 
the two. Novatian, the famous schismatic, argued 
solidly and clearly for the orthodox belief. Diony- 
sius, Bishop in the latter half of the third century, 
made the nearest approach, perhaps, of any theolo- 
gian during that period, to the exact via media of 
the Mcene definitions. 57 On the whole, however, 
the West was more distinguished for holding the 
Faith, than for shedding much light upon it. In the 
East it was almost the reverse. Every thing tended 
there towards refined and subtle speculations. In 



65 This was a purely practical 
ground ; and it is easy to see (the 
principal passages are given in 
Gieseler, § 51) that it meant no- 
thing more than the common belief, 
as opposed either to secret tra- 
ditions or private speculations. 
Hence Rome was entitled to par- 
ticular weight, as being a centre 
of universal resort, a point of 
confluence to opinions and tradi- 



tions from all quarters : — " in qua 
semper ab his qui sunt undiqtie 
conservata est ea quae est ab 
apostolis traditio." See Book iii. 
chap. 4 of this History. 

56 He is liable to the charge of 
subordinationism : Tertull. adv. 
Prax. ii. ; and therefore had to 
defend himself against the charge 
of tritheism : adv. Prax. iii. 

6T See Gieseler, § 66, n. 16. 



CH. Tin.] HEEESIES HOW MET — COUNCILS. 207 

the two great schools of Antiocli in S yria, and Alex- 
andria in Egypt, the one distinguished for its ration- 
al the other for its ultra-spiritual bias, numberless 
questions were opened and explored, many positions 
were taken which proved untenable, and the minds 
of the learned were more or less troubled ; but the 
result, on the whole, was an advance in the direction 
of a lively understanding of the Creed, as not merely 
" a rule of belief," but rather an all-pervading essence 
and spirit of the truth. Thus the East and the "West, 
or more precisely Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, Rome, 
supplied one another's deficiencies ; and were the drfa^Xn- 
threefold cord of witness, as it were, by which every tI0Ch ' 
word of the common trust became more firmly 
bound upon the minds and consciences of believers. 



CHAPTEE Yin. 



HERESIES HOW MET COEXCILS. 



Of the vast flood of heresies, partly enumerated Heresies 

., ,. , t i divided 

and described m the preceding chapter, the same and dis- 

£ . & r I integrated 

general account may be given, as of the waters 
poured forth from the mouth of the dragon who per- 
secuted the Woman of the Apocalypse ; the earth 
opened her mouth and swallowed them up. They 
were not vanquished by wisdom, or by mental prow- 
ess only ; though logic in every form was vigorously 
employed against them : it was rather, that they 
destroyed themselves ; being providentially divided, 
and subdivided, flowing into sect-channels which 



208 HISTOEY OF THE CHUECH. [bk. II. 

became ever more narrow and more shallow, till, 
gradually absorbed into heathenism, they so disap- 
peared and came to nonght. 

dfiiectics r ^ ne Gnostic systems especially had in them no 
principle of union, or even of cohesion. Their exist- 
ence, therefore, is chiefly interesting as showing the 
mental subtlety and activity of the times, and as in 
part accounting for that transition which took place, 
from an age of simple faith to one of dialectics and 
polemical discussion. It was gnosticism, in fact, 
which awakened the Church to a consciousness of 
her vast intellectual resources. In the presence of 
this great development of heathen wisdom, she felt 
that she must convince the minds as well as win the 
hearts of men. From the high ground of simple 
dogma she must descend into the arena of philo- 
sophic disputation. The candle of the Gospel, once 
lighted, could not be hid under a bushel. It must 
shed its light upon that medley of loose notions by 
which the world was distracted. By a natural 
instinct, therefore, and in the main a healthy one, 
the successors of Polycarp and Pothinus departed 
more and more from the quiet ways of these vener- 
able fathers, and threw themselves earnestly into the 
great battles of the day. 

weapons The contest with the Montanist and other sensuous 

of faith. 

heresies had a similar effect: though, in this case, 
the energies of the Church were drawn into a dif- 
ferent channel, and questions of discipline or order 
attracted the chief attention. When the Phrygian 
enthusiasm first broke out, the Clergy, strong in 
simple faith and unaccustomed to the use of dialectic 
weapons, were for a little while content to exorcise 
the evil. They soon found that it was a spirit not 



CH. Vm.] HERESIES HOW MET — COUNCILS. 209 

so easily allayed. Though such, men as " Zoticus of 
Comana and Julian of Apamea, eminent Bishops of 
the Church," attempted " to examine the babbling 
spirit, their tongues were bridled," we are told, " bj 
a certain Themison and his followers." In the same 
way, " the blessed Sotas in Anchialus wished to cast 
out the daemon from Priseilla, but the hypocrites 
would not allow him." Some who made similar 
efforts from -motives of vain-glory not only failed, 
but became themselves victims of the contagious Exorcism 

fails. 

disorder. 1 Others were satisfied to avoid, or simply 
rebuke, the possession, and by this prudent course 
escaped injury themselves, but do not seem to have 
been able to neutralize its power. The Phrygian 
ee stacy, in short, was a phenomenon by which the 
wisest heads were not a little puzzled. If it was, 
what religious men believed, a demoniacal posses- 
sion, 2 it was manifestly one of that kind which 
requires something more than adjuration to cast 
it out. 

Under these circumstances, it is highly interesting Reason 
to. observe, as the necessity of confuting the new to. 
doctrine became more apparent, how cautiously the 
simple faith of the times girded itself, as it were, for 
the unwelcome task. 3 "For a long time urged," 
remarks one, "to write a discourse against the 
heresy, I have been somewhat in doubt until now, not 
indeed for want of argument to confute the false ^toie- 

° some 

doctrine, but from a fearful apprehension lest I dread of 

novelties. 

should seem to be uttering new precejrts, or to be 

1 Enseb. v. 16, 19. in modern "Spiritualism'' must 

2 The alternate elation and de- strike every one who has looked 
jeetion of the victims of this into this remarkable phrensy. 
delusion are described by Euseb. 3 Euseb. v. 16. 

v. 16. Its analogy to phenomena 



210 HISTOEY OF THE CHUECH. [bK. II. 

adding something to that doctrine of the E~ew Testa- 
ment, which no one who would live according to the 
Gospel should add to or diminish." "With many 
such misgivings, the controversy after a while was 
fairly inaugurated. Apollinaris of Hierapolis in 
Asia; Miltiades a philosopher, Apologist, and his- 
torian ; Serapion the eighth Bishop of Antioch ; 
Apollonius who wrote just forty years after Mon- 
tanus arose ; and many other leading minds of the 
day, met the new prophets in oral disputation and in 
writing; or fortified the faith of believers with 
copious proofs from the Scriptures, that ecstasy was 
a mark of diabolic rather than of divine inspira- 
tion. The question thus opened was one of the most 
difficult in Religion, and was most elaborately dis- 
°f P the tion cusse d- That the Spirit does not overpower or 
spirit. extinguish, but elevates and quickens the natural 
powers of man; that even under the hand of the 
Most High, the prophet is not a mere instrument or 
organ, but rather a laborer together with .God ; that, 
in short, the man inspired is a man in full possession 
of his reason, was argued with great ability from 
the Old Testament and the New ; and in the de- 
velopment of this argument a new impulse was 
given to the critical study of the Scriptures. "The 
True false prophet," it was contended, 4 " is carried away 
aidfake. by a vehement ecstacy devoid of shame or appre- 
hension. Let the followers of Montanus show, that 
any in the Old or New Testament were thus violent- 
ly agitated and carried away in spirit : that Agabus, 
or Judas, or Silas, or the daughters of Philip, or 
Ammias in Philadelphia, or Quadratus, or others 

4 Euseb. v. 17. 



CH. VIII.] HERESIES HOW MET — COUNCILS. 211 

such-like, ever acted in this way." Thus, gifts of 
prophetic power were not declared impossible : the 
Church, in fact, generally believed in their continu- 
ance, or at least in their occasional reappearance: 
it was merely contended that the claim to such gifts ggrfts 
should be tested by the rules of reason, common 
sense, and Holy Scripture. 

But in this general resort to reason and dialectic £jj rdl a 
skill, it was not forgotten that the Church is in a witness, 
special sense the witness to the Truth ; and that it is 
her office to confute error by the force of united tes- 
timony, as well as by the weapons of argument and 
persuasion. 

Whether Provincial Synods 5 had been held before synods. 
the rise of the Phrygian delusion, the silence of anti- 
quity leaves uncertain. Gnosticism, perhaps, was too 
remote from the sympathies of believers, or too obvi- 
ously at variance with the Creed, to need any formal 
or united testimony against it. It appealed to philo- 
sophic minds, and such minds could meet it with phi- 
losophic weapons. But Montanism was eminently a 
popular delusion. Its prominent features were but 
slight exaggerations of errors more or less tolerated, 
or even of truths or half-truths commonly received. 
It had been warmed into life in the very bosom of the 
Church. And as with Montanism, so with the ration- 

5 The Apostolic Councils men- divine guidance ; (3) business pro- 
tioned in the Acts (i. vi. xv.) are posed and so far as necessary dis- 
a more than sufficient precedent cussed; (4) a decision pronounced, 
for the Synods of later times, in- agreed to by all present and put 
asmuch as the Apostles, being in- forth in the name of all: see Acts 
dividually inspired, had less need i. 16, 24 ; vi. 5 ; xv. 22, 23. Yen- 
to confer with one another or with erable Bede supposes, that the 
the Elders and Brethren. It may Assembly in Acts, xxi. 18, was 
be observed of these Councils, that also a Council: namely, a Council 
(1) there was particular business of the Jerusalem Church, 
before each ; (2) special prayer for 



212 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bK. II. 



Their 
necessity. 



alistic errors that arose in the controversy with it. 
"While Christians everywhere acknowledged one su- 
preme and only God, and everywhere confessed in this 
Godhead the Names of three Persons, Father, Son and 
Holy Ghost ; yet with regard to the great mystery 
of the Three in One there had been little controversy, 
and consequently little need of subtle definitions. 
Plausible misstatements, therefore, of the doctrine 
of the Church, especially if found available in the 
war against Montanus, might easily obtain currency 
among a large number of believers. From an in- 
stinctive feeling of danger on this side, the Bishops 
fell back upon the Catholic unity of the Church, or, 
in fact, upon the collegiate type of the ministerial 
First occa- office I were more frequent than hitherto in confer- 

sional,theu x , 

regular, ence and correspondence ; and Synods, at first occa- 
sional, afterwards more regular, and at length once 
or twice a year, became in a short time the settled 
order of things. It is not improbable, however, that 
such Councils had been holden from time to time, 
long before they began to make a figure in Church 
history. 6 The primitive Church, as a general rule, 
took very little pains to record its own beginnings. 
In these early Councils the proceedings seem to 

the truth. ] iave been of a very simple character. The Breth- 
ren came together ; namely, Bishops, Priests and 
Deacons, in the presence of the People ; and united 
their voices and subscriptions in testimony to the 
Truth, or in condemnation of some error. Thus the 
Martyrs of Lyons, when in prison, formed a kind of 

6 One of the earliest on record follower ofValentinus, who taught 

(after Apostolic times) is said to that sin in the baptized is no longer 

have been holden in Sicily, about sin. See Mansi Concilia. For 

a. d. 125, against one Heracleon, a others, see Routh's Reliqu. Sacr, 



United 
witness to 



CH. VIII.] HEEESIES HOW MET — COUNCILS. 213 

concilium, and as such bore their witness against the 
heresy of Montanus. So, in a letter of Serapion of 
Antioch quoted by Eusebius, there are subscriptions 
of several Bishops : for example, " I, Aureliue Cyre- 
nius, a Witness ;" or, " iElius Publius Julius Bishop 
of Debeltum a colony of Thrace, as sure as God lives 
in Heaven." In another early Synod, headed by 
Apollonius of Corinth, 7 it is mentioned that with the 
signatures many testimonies of the scriptures were 
inserted : " to show that their zeal was against the 
wicked sects, not against the persons of the secta- 
rians." 

It is probable that the passion for legislation, the Passion 
besetting sin of assemblies of this kind, was little felt iationf s " 
before the middle or towards the end of the third 
century. The earliest canons are aimed chiefly at 
two extremes : 8 a proud ascetic spirit encroaching on 
the one side, and heathenish immoralities and irregu- 
larities overflowing on the other. 

However this may be, the same cause that brought Counci i 3 

J ■ o apostolic. 

the Apostles and Brethren together in conference dur- 
ing the first century, was found equally operative with 
the Bishops and People of the second. The instinct 
of self-defence is a sufficient reason in both cases. S. 
Paul, contending against the rigid views of the Ju- 
daizers in Antioch, was strengthened for the battle 
by the united testimony of the Apostles, Elders and 
Brethren in Jerusalem. 9 So, in later times, the Doc- 

7 Mansi Concilia, torn. i.,p. 681. African Synods, in Hunter's Pri- 
The proceedings of the African mordia JEccl. Afric. 

Council, appended to S. Cyprian's 9 Acts, xv. It is pleasing to no- 
works, will give a clear idea of the tice in the latest Synods of this 
way in which things were man- period that the Apostolic prece- 
aged in those bodies. dent was still closely followed ; 

8 See Apostolic Constitutions, that Bishops, Presbyters, Deacons 
and Canons ; also, Canons of early and People were all present. What 



214 



HISTOKY OF THE CHURCH. 



[be:, n. 



Synods 
against 
Synods. 



Sobering 
influence. 



New times, 

new 

strength. 



tor or Disputer, whose painful duty it was to shut the 
mouths of heretics, had need to be corrected or con- 
firmed, whichever it might be, by the deliberate judg- 
ment of the great body of his Brethren. 

But when, as sometimes happened, Councils them- 
selves became parties in controversy, a remedy could 
be found only in waiting for the action of larger, 
more general, and more impartial Synods. Such was 
the case with the long continued strife about the Asiatic 
Pascha. In this case, Italian and other Councils were 
opposed to Asiatic. The same difficulty was expe- 
rienced in the baptismal controversy. But even in 
such cases, the habit of looking from individual, local 
or sectional disputants to the great body of the Breth- 
ren, and of awaiting their decision, had undoubtedly 
a sobering and liberalizing effect ; so that differences 
which in any other society would have led to griev- 
ous schisms, were in the case of Catholics kept in 
charitable suspension, till finally the times were ripe 
for a settlement satisfactory to all. In this way it 
happened, that the great Council of Nice had ques- 
tions up before it which had been mooted for two 
centuries or more. Its decisions were the comple- 
ment of the decisions of many preceding Synods. 

In short, that new aspect of Church life which 
marks the latter half of the second century, was a 
necessary and wholesome adaptation to altered cir- 
cumstances. The Church, in her conflict with the 



share the People had in the pro- 
ceedings is not easy to determine. 
Bishops, at that period, being in 
part chosen by the People, and 
being from the nature of their of- 
fice in constant intercourse with 
them, were eminently representa- 
tives of what may be called the 



lay-sense of the Church. Few 
cases occurred, therefore, in which 
the sentiments of the Bishops and 
of the People materially differed. 
Whenever an opposition party ex- 
isted, it found its main strength 
among the Clergy. See Pusey, 
Council* of the Church, Oxf. 1857. 



CH. IX.] S. IREN^US AND HIS DISCIPLES. 215 

great Serpent, had to be led into the wilderness, as 
it were. Amid new and searching trials, she was to 
become conscious of new strength. From lack of 
appreciation of this fact, the history of primitive 
Christianity has been much misunderstood. On the 
one hand, virtues have been attributed to this period 
with a rhetorical profusion unwarranted by facts. 
On the other hand, every change or imagined change 
has been regarded as a corruption. But, in sober 
truth, there is no portion of Church history which 
has not vices enough in it to shock a sensitive mind, 
or virtues enough, if looked for, to command its 
admiration. The real proof of an age is, how it 
meets its own trials, and accomplishes its own work. 
To judge aright, therefore, of the complex and often An ag e - 
painful details of the period we are now approaching, u s Mais. 7 
not only the varied character of the conflict from 
within and from without, but the infinite importance 
of the interests at stake, and above all, the mingled 
earnestness and frivolity of an age equally profligate 
and enlightened, must be taken into the account and 
kept charitably in view. 



CHAPTEK IX. 

S. IPvEN^TJS AND HIS DISCIPLES. 



"With the exception of two distinguished Africans, Leading 
Minucius Felix the Apologist, and Tertullian the pionsf 
father of Latin theology, all the leading champions 
of the Faith, at the end of the second century and the 
beginning of the third, were Greek in extraction, Ian- 



216 HISTOEY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. II. 

guage, and intellectual habits. Of these, S. Irenseus 
was in the West the most prominent example, 
s-irenseus Brought up from early childhood nnder the eye 
120-202. f Polycarp, Pothinus, Papias, and other disciples 
of S. John, he was thoroughly imbued with the 
spirit of that devout and thoughtful school. But he 
was an eager inquirer also into all the learning of 
his age. 1 So far as can be judged from the few frag- 
ments that remain of' the Greek original, his style is 
not devoid of elegance and good taste. But the rich 
and expressive imagery of the Scriptures, and the 
fresh world of thought which had come in with 
Christianity, no longer admitted of strict adherence 
New wine to classic models. To hold the new wine of the Gos- 
botties. pel, new bottles must be made. The zest with which 
the early Fathers studied the sacred writings ; their 
profound and lively faith in the divine Spirit that 
breathed through them ; the loving ingenuity with 
which they made all parts alike profitable for in- 
struction; their luminous method of quoting; and 
above all, the extraordinary aptness, abundance, and 
diversity of their citations, were creating a new 
literature quite different from the classic, and re- 
quiring to be judged by an entirely different rule. 
Irenseus was one of the most discreet of the first 
laborers in this field. His wonderful knowledge of 
the Scriptures, however, was a knowledge of the 
heart even more than of the head ; and his interpre- 
tations, if judged by modern canons, are liable to 
the charge of occasional extravagance. 
Blemishes. He had, in fact, the faults as well as merits of his 
school. Seeing Christ in every thing, and delighting 

1 Teftull. advers. Valent. 5. 



CH. IX.] S. IREK^US AND HIS DISCIPLES. 217 

more in the application than in the critical interpre- 
tation of the Scriptures, he was yet in some points a 
literalist to a dangerous extent. From Papias he 
inherited the Millenarian doctrine. Like Justin, he 
regarded the sons of God mentioned in Genesis 2 as 
angelic beings. He believed the story of the mirac- 
ulous agreement and plenary inspiration of the au- 
thors of the Septuagint version, as also the singular 
notion that the Hebrew Scriptures had perished Traditions 
before the days of Ezra, who was miraculously ena- 
bled to reproduce them. Fancies of this kind he 
took at second hand, relying upon the authority of 
such men as Papias, or upon the credit of apocryphal 
productions. 3 For his opinion that our Lord was 
forty years of age at the time of His crucifixion, he 
gives the authority of S. Poly carp and other hearers 
of S. John ; which, as the ancient mind remembered 
numbers chiefly by symbolical association, was prob- 
ably a mere slip of memory. "With a few blemishes 
of this kind, all of them more or less traceable to 
private and apocryphal traditions, the extant works 
of S. Irenseus 4 are among the most valuable of the 
remains of the first three centuries. 

At what time he removed from Asia Minor to irenseus 
Lyons has not been definitely ascertained. It is * ° P * 
only known that at the period of the Lyonnese per- 
secution he was a distinguished Presbyter of that 
Church ; and was entrusted by the martyrs then in 

2 Gen. vi. 2. D. R. Massuet, Paris, mdccx ; 

3 Such as the IVth Book of Beaven's Life and Times of S, 
Esdras ; for the sayings of Papias Irenceus; Tillemont, Memoires, 
and other seniores apud Irenamm, etc. torn. iii. ; and the five Books 
see Routh, Reliqu. Sacr. vol. i. against Heresies, edited by Har- 

4 S. Irensei Episc. Lugdunensis vey, Cambr. 1857. 
et Martyr. Contra Hcereses, etc. 

10 



218 



HISTOEY OF THE CHURCH. 



[be. n. 



Troubles 
in Rome. 



Blastus 
and 

Florinus 



prison with the letter which they wrote to Eleutherus 
of Rome, for the promotion of peace among the 
Churches : in testimony, that is, against the formida- 
a. d. 178. ble novelty of the heresy of Montanus. After the 
death of Pothinus he became Bishop, and had a cer- 
tain primacy over the Gallic Churches. 5 Of his 
labors and influence in that extensive field, little is 
told us beyond the fact that he sent missions to 
Besancon and Yalence ; and became, in general, the 
teacher and enlightener of the Celtic nation. 

His cares, however, were not confined to his own 
province. Connected with Asia Minor by birth and 
education, and interested in the affairs of the Roman 
Christians by his mission to the imperial city, he was 
deeply concerned for the growing troubles of Chris- 
tendom at large, and for those of the Roman Church 
in particular. For the Metropolis at this period was 
not a little distracted by internal feuds. One Blas- 
tus, an Asiatic and a Presbyter, was forming a party 
in the Judaizing direction, and made a point of 
celebrating the Pascha on the fourteenth day of the 
month. Whether he ran into formal schism is not 
quite clear. So also one Florinus, a Roman Presby- 
ter, alarmed at the bias that existed among specula- 
tive minds towards the heresy of two principles, 
maintained the doctrine of the Divine monarchy in 
a way which seemed to make God the author of evil. 
Irenseus argued and remonstrated with both of these. 
Both were Asiatics by birth ; and Florinus, in par- 
ticular, he could appeal to by their joint remem- 
brance of the saintly Polycarp. It shows the mani- 
fold temptations of the times, and the facility with 



5 Euseb. v. 23. 



CH. IX.] S. IRENJEUS AND HIS DISCIPLES. 219 

which men glide from one heresy to another, that 
Florinus, when driven from his monarchian position, 
took refuge in the Yalentinian theory ; finding the 
source of all evil in the body of man, or in the mate- 
rial world, and making it to have dropped, as it 
were, from the carelessness of one of the lower seons. 

The pursuit of error into this new labyrinth was caution of 
felt by Irenseus to be a difficult and perilous under- 
taking. In proportion as charity required him to 
apply the knife or the caustic to the tumid errors 
that preyed upon the Church, the same charity 
demanded that it should be done with tenderness 
to the patient, and with a thorough understanding 
of the exact nature of the disease. 6 In argument 
with heretics, every word must be weighed, every 
logical consequence diligently explored. Hence the 
solemn adjuration, with which his treatise on the 
Ogdoad concludes ; and for calling attention to which 
we have to thank Eusebius, as it lets us not into the 
mind merely, but into the very heart of a high-toned, 
charitable, and conscientious orthodoxy. "I adjure," Hisadju- 

7 m «/ *f ' ration. 

says he, " the transcriber of this book by our Lord 
Jesus Christ, and by His glorious appearing when 
He comes to judge the quick and dead, that thou 
carefully compare and correct thy transcript by this 
very copy, and that thou transcribe this adjuration 
and set it in thy copy." A book against heretics 
was intended to be a chart to save souls from ship- 
wreck ; 7 it must be a work, therefore, of the most 
scrupulous accuracy. 

Once engaged in the study and refutation of Gnos- 

6 S. Iren. lib. iii. c. 46. rationes JLibris Additce, see Fa- 

* S. Iren. lib. 4. For an inter- bricius, Bibliothec. Grrcec. lib. v. 
esting collection of JDiroe et Adju- cap. 1. 



220 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [BE. n. 

tic heresies, Irenseus had many reasons for perseve- 

co h s!an S ar " rance m n ^ s tas k- O ne Marcus, a disciple of Yalen- 
tinus, had given a popular form to the aeon-system 
of his master, and was disseminating it widely among 
the cities of the Rhone. He was able, by some sort 
of legerdemain, to convert the wine of the Sacrament 
into blood. By this and similar arts, he attached to 
himself a flock of silly women, wealthy and of high 
rank, whom he drugged or otherwise induced into 
an ecstatic state, similar to that witnessed among the 
Phrygian prophetesses. Religions of this kind, com- 
bining the popular spiritualism of the day with cer- 
tain elements of the Gospel, were formidable rivals 
of Christianity in the affections of the people. Those 
who embraced such systems were " spiritual souls ;" 
those who rejected them were "psychical" or "car- 
nal." But as spiritual souls, from the Yalentinian 
point of view, were incapable of evil or of contami- 
nation by evil ; and as Marcus among other things 
pretended to confer a miraculous gift of invisibility : 
the descent from high-wrought religious enthusiasm 
to the lowest sensuality was rendered particularly 
Their viie easy. Irenseus saw, in the vile practices of these 
prac ices. ]y[ arcog i angj a legitimate development of Gnostic and 
Yalentinian principles. To the study of these prin- 
ciples, therefore, and to their exposure and refutation, 
he devoted a large portion of his time for many years, 
paschai The part he bore in the Paschal controversy was 
question. highly honorable, and worthy of a disciple of S. 
Poly carp. 

As already noticed in this chapter, there was a 

faction at Rome, of which one Blastus seems to have 

a. d. 176. been chief in the times of Eleutherus, that availed 

themselves of the difference of custom between Rome 



CH. IX.] S. IREN^EUS AND HIS DISCIPLES. 221 

and Asia Minor as a handle of sedition. It is proba- 
ble that there were many Asiatic Christians in the 
imperial city. For some time, according to the 
charitable understanding which existed between 
Poly carp and Anicetus, these seem to have been 
allowed to follow the custom of their own country, 
ending the fast before the Pascha on the fourteenth 
day of Nisan, instead of waiting for the ensuing 
Sunday. Such differences would be a matter of 
little moment, so long as there existed no other 
causes of dissension. But when a seditious spirit 
became almost a chronic evil, and especially when a 
Judaizing bias began to show itself, any peculiarity, 
however unimportant, could be converted into a 
rallying point for schism, or at least of disaffection. 
This began to be the case with the Easter contro- 
versy. The successors of Anicetus could not let the 
question stand where he had left it. Soter seems to a. d. i68. 
have found it necessary to insist upon conformity to 
the Poman practice, on the part of those Asiatics, at 
least, who were residents in Pome. The question, Becom es 

' -L ' more 

the meanwhile, was becoming more complicated, complex. 
The Laodicean Christians, not content to break the 
fast at the same time with the Jews, had, it would 
seem, adopted the further custom of eating a paschal 
lamb on the occasion. 8 It was under these circum- 
stances that Victor, being provoked without doubt a. d. 196. 
by the increase of the factious spirit before-men- 
tioned, and appealing to a desire very generally 

8 This, however, is hardly more whether our Lord ate the paschal 

than a plausible conjecture, found- lamb on the fourteenth day, or 

ed on slight intimations in Euseb. by anticipation on the thirteenth, 

iv. 26, aud in the C/tronicon Pas- is amply discussed in Dr. Jarvis's 

ehale. >ee Gieseler, § 53 (Smith's Introduction, part ii. ch. vii. 
Ed.), n. 34-36. The question 



222 



HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. 



[bk. n. 



Victor 
and the 
Asiatics. 



Irenseus 
counsels 
peace. 



entertained, initiated a movement towards uniform- 
ity of practice in all parts of the world, He wrote 
to the various Churches, and among others to those 
of Asia Minor. He was determined, he declared, 
that the Church should have nothing in common with 
the Jews. The movement excited a warm interest 
in all quarters. Many Councils were held, and innu- 
merable letters were written. Most of the Churches, 
especially those of Jerusalem, Csesarea, Corinth, 
Osrhoene, Pontus, Italy, and Gaul, decreed that the 
fast of the Holy Week was not to be broken till 
Sunday, the Day of the Resurrection. On the 
strength of this general consent, Victor wrote to the 
Asiatics in a more decided tone, threatening them 
with excommunication if they held out any longer. 
But the Quartodecimans, as they were called, headed 
by Polycrates Bishop of Ephesus, a grey-haired 
veteran of " slender frame" but mighty spirit, whose 
family had furnished eight prelates to the Church, 
unanimously refused to depart from their tradition. 
Victor proceed to carry out his threat. In this, how- 
ever, his brother Bishops generally declined to go 
with him. On the contrary, they rebuked him with 
much severity ; and exhorted him to return to unity 
and love. 

Irenseus, in particular, while he followed the com- 
mon custom in . preference to that in which he had 
been bred, was urgent in his remonstrances against 
Victor's course ; and wrote to him and to many other 
distinguished prelates. From his protest on this 
occasion we learn that there still existed no little 
diversity, both as to the time and as to the manner 
of fasting ; some observing one day, some two, some 
more, before the Easter Feast, and some again fasting 



CH. IX.] S. IREN^US AND HIS DISCIPLES. 223 

forty hours consecutively. This diversity in small 
matters, Irenseus justly adds, made the unanimity 
of the Church in more essential things only the more 
conspicuous. 9 

Irenseus died, as some say a martyr, when the nis death. 
Church of Lyons was a second time devastated, in 
the persecution under Severus about the beginning 
of the third century. 

The witness of Irenseus on that most interesting church 
subject, the spread of Christianity in his day, is 
extremely vague ; but we may gather from it, that 
not only among the Gauls, but among the Germans 
on the "West of the Rhine, the Gospel was success- 
fully preached. His declaration that it was still 
attended with miraculous demonstrations is some- Miracles, 
what injured by his mentioning no particular ex- 
ample, and by his confining himself to the general 
statement that such things frequently occurred. He 
is careful to add, however, that the daemons when 
exorcised returned no more; that many relieved 
from them became good Christians ; and that when 
such acts of mercy were performed, it was done 
simply by prayer, in the Name of Jesus, without 
any juggling ceremonial ; and in no case would any 
sort of gift or recompense be accepted. The serious- 
ness with which he dwells on details of this kind is 
sufficient proof of his own convictions on the subject, 
but hardly enough to satisfy the demands of modern 
criticism. 10 It is not improbable, however, that the 
" gifts" lingered longer on the outskirts of Christian- 

» • 

9 For a judicious account of gives quite a list of peculiari- 
ties and similar diversities, see ties. 

Socrates, Eccles. Hist. v. 22 : also, 10 This point is more fully con- 

Sozomen, vii. 19. This latter sidered in Book iii, ch, 8, 



224: 



HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. 



[BK. II. 



Disciples 

of 

Irenaeus. 



Caius, a.d. 
201-219. 



Hippoly- 
tus, A. D. 
198-236. 



Hostility 
to the 
Roman 
Bishops. 



ity in the missionary field, than in regions where the 
Church was fully established. 

The light which Irenseus shed npon the West 
dnring the latter part of the second century was 
transmitted to the first half of the third by two of 
his disciples : Caius a learned Presbyter, and per- 
haps an Evangelist or Bishop at large, and Hippo- 
lytus still more distinguished as the austere and 
philosophic prelate of Porto near Pome. 

Of the former, little remains to warrant the esteem 
in which he was held by the ancients. He wrote 
against Proculus, a Montanistic teacher, about the 
time of Zephyrinus Bishop of Rome, and was an op- 
ponent of the Millenarian doctrine, which he ascribes 
to the heretic Cerinthus. 11 

Hippolytus, 12 recently brought into prominent no- 
tice by the discovery of his " Philosophoumena" or 
" Refutation of all Heresies," is almost the embodi- 
ment of an interesting phase of early Church history ; 
having been an earnest controversialist, the leader of 
an opposition party in Rome, and a rigorous censor of 
the laxity of his times. As Bishop of the Portus Ro- 
manus, one of the most important of the six Sees in 
the immediate neighborhood of the city, he was a 
prominent and perhaps leading member of that band 
of suburban prelates called at a later period cardinales 
episcqpi, which took the lead in the Roman Presbe- 
tery. At all events, he appears as a chief and some- 
what dreaded counsellor of theBish ops Zephyrinus and 
Callistus. To both these he was hostile on theologicaL 
and disciplinary grounds ; accusing them of Patripafl 
sianism in doctrine, and of serious innovations in the 

11 Euseb. ii. 25; iii. 28-31. Refutat. Omn. Hceresium, lib. ix. 

12 S. Hippolyti, Episc. et Mart. Bunsen's Hippolytus. 



CH. IX.] S. IREXJ2US AND HIS DISCIPLES. 225 

conduct of Church affairs. His testimony on this sub- 
ject is highly interesting, as showing the difficulties 
that involved the leading Bishops in those times. On 
the one side beset by austere theorizers, rigid in their Pastors 

and 

notions of discipline and keen in doctrinal disputation, Doctors. 
and on the other having to maintain the Faith against 
plausible and subtle speculations of the most opposite 
descriptions, they were obliged to be somewhat slow 
and even vacillating in their judgment of the move- 
ments of the day. As a general rule, the Bishops of 
the great Sees, and more especially of Rome, were 
men of practical and administrative talent, rather than 
of learning and theological acumen. It is not to be 
wondered at, therefore, that they were not always on 
good terms with their more scholarly advisers ; and 
that the tendency to philosophize on the one side, and 
perhaps to temporize on the other, should break out 
occasionally into mutual distrust. 

As to Hippolytus, he undoubtedly theorized as ms 
far as safety would permit. In his dread of the extreme, 
patripassian error, he taught a kind of subordination 
of the Son to the Father, which gave a handle for 
the charge of Ditheism, or a doctrine of two Gods. 13 
The charitable construction, which enables us to 
acquit him of actual heresy in this direction, may be 
applied with equal force, perhaps, to the alleged 
opposite leaning of the party of Callistus. 14 The 

13 His Veritatis Doctrina, how- the Son. Refutat. Omn. Hceres. 
ever, a fine philosophic version lib. x. 32, et ss. 
of the Creed, addressed to Greeks, 14 The doctrine of Callistus, as 
Egyptians, Chaldeans, and all stated by Hippolytus, is undoubt- 
mankind, is enough to vindicate edly heretical; being the same 
his substantial orthodoxy. In it, substantially as that ascribed to 
the distinction between things Noetus. Besides which, the he- 
generated and created is sharply retical sect of the Callistians seem 
drawn. So, also, the Divinity of to have got their name from him. 
10* 



severity. 



226 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [BK. H. 

same reasoning applies to his invectives on the re- 
laxation of discipline in the Church. His own 
notions on the subject were austere and impracti- 
cable, suited only to a community of philosophers or 
monks. His denunciations, therefore, are valuable, 
as showing the complexity of the questions which 
the Clergy had to solve, and the bitterness of feeling 
that necessarily arose, rather than for any very clear 
light they shed upon the character or principles of 
the dominant influence in Rome. 

The peculiar severity of tone, which induces some 
to suspect him of a leaning towards the Montanists, 
or to rank him with the Novatians of the latter half 
of the century, he had in common with the philo- 
sophic class to which he belonged. Like his master 
Irengeus, he favored Chiliasm. Like most of the 
learned teachers of his times, he made Gnostic views 
a matter of particular attention, and traced all 
errors to one or other of the heathen philosophic 
schools. 
His death. It is said, that before his death he repented of the 
violence of his conduct, and exhorted his followers 
to strive for peace. He suffered martyrdom, pro- 
bably in Rome, during the persecution under Max- 
imin the Thracian. 



CH. X.] THE ALEXANDRINE SCHOOL. 227 



CHAPTEK X. 

THE ALEXANDRINE SCHOOL. 

In the constitution of the Episcopate of Alexandria Episco- 
there seems to have been some departure from the 
general practice of the Church, the exact nature of 
which, however, it is not easy to determine. The 
amplest account of the peculiarity is given by Eu- 
tychius, a Patriarch of Alexandria in the tenth 
century. 1 

" S. Mark," it is said, " along with Ananias or- According 
dained twelve Presbyters, to remain with the Patri- cMus. 
arch ; so that, when the chair should become vacant, 
they might elect one out of the twelve, on whose head 
the other eleven should lay their hands, give him 
benediction, and constitute him Patriarch. This 
continued at Alexandria till the time of the Patri- 
arch Alexander (a. d. 325) .... who forbade the 
Presbyters in future to ordain their Patriarch, but 
decreed that on a vacancy of the See the neighboring 
Bishops should convene for the purpose of filling it 
with a proper Patriarch, whether elected from those 
Presbyters, or from any others" Eutychius adds, 
that during the time of the first ten Patriarchs, there 
were no Bishops in the rest of Egypt; Demetrius, 
the eleventh, having been the first to consecrate 
them. 

1 See Neale's Holy Eastern Church, Book i. sect. 1. 



One ex- 
planation 



228 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. n. 

According S. Jerome gives substantially the same account ; 

rome. . except that he makes no mention of ordination by 
the eleven, and says the change of custom occurred 
in the times of Heraclas and Dionysius. 2 

In the silence of contemporaries on the subject, 3 
and from the vagueness as well as lateness of the 
testimony given, there is room for the conjecture 
that Egypt, instead of being divided among several 
local sees, was governed for a while by a college of 
twelve chief pastors residing in Alexandria; the 
Bishop of that See being at their head. Nothing 
could be more natural than such an arrangement, at 
the first planting of the Church. In later times, 
however, as the Gospel extended into the Provinces, 
it would be found inconvenient, and each important 
city would desire a resident Bishop of its own. This 
is the most natural inference, if the language of 
Eutychius be taken to the letter. For the Presby- 
ters mentioned by him were manifestly Presbyters 
who had power to ordain; but Presbyters 4 with 
power to ordain are the same as Bishops, in the 
restricted sense of the word. As S. Jerome says, in 
connection with this subject, "What does a Bishop 
do, except ordination, which a Presbyter cannot do ?" 

Another This is said on the supposition that the eleven 
both elected and ordained their Patriarch. But as 



explana 
tion. 



2 Epistol. ad Evangelum. ruling party had been guilty of 

3 It is fatal to the theory of any innovations. 

any radical, or even marked, - 4 It is hardly necessary to re- 
change in the Church government mind the reader, that the term 
of Egypt, that the period in ques- Presbyter, like the term Priest, 
tion is covered by the names of or Sacerdos, was often used as a 
Origen, Meletius, and others, who name for the Ministry in general, 
belonged to an opposition party, and therefore might be applied 
and who certainly would have to any order. 2 John, 1 ; 3 John, 
made themselves heard, if the 1 : 1 Peter, v. 1. 



CH. X.] THE ALEXANDRINE SCHOOL. 229 

that point is not certain, resting only on the testi- 
mony of a writer manifestly inaccurate in language 
and living six centuries after the period of which he 
speaks, the peculiarity of the Chnrch of Alexandria 
may have been merely that of electing a Bishop out 
of a close corporation of twelve Presbyters, instead of 
choosing from the Church at large as was customary 
in other places. 

However that may be, the See of Alexandria was Demetrius 
undoubtedly a chief centre of Church life, its in- a. d. is9. 
fluence extending by the end of the third century 
over a hundred dioceses in Egypt, Pentapolis and 
Libya. Till the time of Demetrius, however, little 
is known of its history beyond a list of names. He, 
it is said, was both a layman and a married man at 
the time of his election, and totally illiterate. But, 
addressing himself zealously to the duties of his of- 
fice, he became by diligent study one of the most 
learned prelates of his time ; and it was during his 
episcopate that Alexandria, by the brilliant efforts of 
its philosophic teachers on the one hand, and by the 
sterling orthodoxy of its clergy on the other, took a 
decided lead in that work of intellectual progress for 
which, as we have seen, the period had begun to be 
distinguished. 

Considering the character and position of the city , Centr . e of 

J- •> learning. 

it could hardly have been otherwise. To Greek and 
Hebrew alike, 5 Alexandria was the seat of philosophy 

5 The Alexandrine Jews figure lation of the Old Testament into 

largely in that course of Provi- Greek was one part of their work: 

dential preparation, so wonder- the development of a liberal 

fully ordered, by which the wall interpretation was another. In 

of separation between Jews and this latter point Philo Judseus, 

Gentiles was secretly undermined, born about twenty years before 

and the way was opened for the the Christian era, was a valuable 

spread of the Gospel. The trans- instrument. His works are ac- 



2S0 



HISTORY OE THE CHURCH. 



[be. n. 



Judaic 
and new 
Platonic 
wisdom. 



Pantsenus, 
a. d. 180. 



and learning. It was the congenial home of Gnostic 
and Platonic dreams ; the centre of a liberal and 
spiritual, though mystic, Judaism. Heathen myths 
and Scripture verities, by a process of allegorizing 
fanciful in some respectSj but not without a tincture 
of earnest religious feeling, had been blended, as it 
were, in a .richly colored though bewildering and 
deceptive light. In the first century, Philo the 
learned Jew had flourished there. Towards the end 
of the second century, Ammonius Saccas, who had 
been a Christian and was more or less imbued with 
elements of Christian truth, opened a fresh vein of 
thought in the new Platonic system. 6 Plotinus and 
others followed in his steps. The school thus found- 
ed claimed to be a Religion as well as a Philosophy. 7 
It pretended to intuitions of truth, or immediate rev- 
elations. It admitted a place for Christ as among 
the greatest of teachers and theurgists. On the same 
principle it did not reject, but spiritualized and so 
labored to justify, the fables of the Greek polytheism. # 
It even endeavored to find a reasonable and religious 
basis for the generally reprobated but much prac- 
ticed arts of magic and divination. 

It was amid such influences that the Catechetical 
School, 8 founded by S. Mark and carried forward, it 
is said, by the labors of Athenagoras, 9 attained its 
first celebrity under the auspices of the famous 
" Sicilian bee," the eclectic philosopher Pantsenus. 



cessible to the English reader in 
Bonn's Eccl. Library. 

Ritter's History of Ancient 
Philosophy, Bk. xiii. Eiiseb.vi.19. 

7 See chap. vi. of this Book. 

8 Guericke, de Schola, quce olim 
Alexandr. floruit, ( 'atechetica. 

9 Originally an Athenian Phi- 



losopher. He wrote an Intercession 
for the Christians about a. d. \11, 
in which he defends them against 
the charges of atheism, cannibal- 
ism and incest. Like most of the 
philosophic theologians, his no- 
tions on many subjects were 
harsh and impracticable. 



CH. X.] THE ALEXANDRINE SCHOOL. 231 

Of him, however, little but his distinguished reputa- 
tion has descended to our times. A deputation from j^™ 
some part of India having come to Demetrius, desir- 
ing him to send thither a teacher of Christian truth, 
Pantgenus was deemed worthy of the mission, and 
departed to that country; There he found some 
traces of the labors of S. Bartholomew the Apostle, 
with a Hebrew copy of the Gospel of S. Matthew. 
He afterwards returned to the school at Alexandria, 
in the conduct of which he was succeeded by his 
better known disciple S. Clement. 

To realize the position of this latter, it is necessary catecheti- 
to remember that the Catechetical School was an 
institution intended rather for those without, than 
for those within the Church. In its simplest form, 
S. Paul dwelling at Pome in his own hired house, 
receiving all who came, preaching the Kingdom of 
God, and speaking of things concerning the Lord 
Jesus Christ, — or the same Apostle disputing daily 
at Ephesus in the school of one Tyrannus, — presents, 
on the whole, a just conception of it. The same may 
be said of Justin Martyr, who, when he lived at 
Pome, was always to be found in his own quarters 
at the Baths of Timotheus, ready to give instruction. 
Li the form it subsequently assumed, we see less of 
the Gospel preacher, more of the philosophic talker. 
A Christian man of science, whether of the Laity 
or Clergy, held himself in readiness to discourse 
upon all subjects connected with religion: to remove 
difficulties, to answer questions, to resolve doubts, to Lay 
prepare the heathen mind, in short, for an intelligent 
reception of the Gospel. "While the School, there- 
fore, dealt with high and sacred themes, it had all 
the range and freedom peculiar to lay-teaching. Its 



232 



HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. 



[be. n. 



Clement, 
189-202. 



His 

Mission. 



analogy, in modern times, is to be found in the rela- 
tion of the press to the pulpit ; or rather, it may be 
said, of the University to the Church. 

Clement, a convert from heathenism and a man 
of encyclopaedic learning, who had travelled in all 
countries, studied in all schools, and profited by all 
systems, — an eclectic " bee" that sucked honey from 
every flower, but found the substance of their sweets 
in " prophetic and apostolic meadows," — was partic- 
ularly well fitted by nature and education to carry 
out this idea. His mission was to the refined and 
cultivated heathen. !Not merely to turn them from 
idolatry by Hortatory Appeals ; but to conduct them 
affably and pleasantly, with moral discourses on the 
way, to the School of divine knowledge ; to hang that 
school, as it were, with embroidered Tapestry-work : 10 
to array Religion in the many-colored robes of a litera- 
ture and philosophy intellectually attractive, — seems 
to have been the object he had constantly in view. 
Hence, though belonging to the priesthood, he mixed 
up philosophy and religion to an extent that exposed 
him to much blame. His tabernacle of Christian 
gnosis was too lavishly adorned with " the spoils of 
the Egyptians." Israel, indeed, might be the en- 
indJsed closed garden of the Lord, a sacred repository of 
choice and healing plants. But the great Gentile 
world was his uninclosed garden. The same Hand 
created both. The same Spirit breathed in both. 
The same Divine Word had shed His light on both. 

Stromata. In this paragraph I 



The en 
closed and 
un 
garden 



10 Such seems, to be the idea 
of his three works, which " rise 
each upon the other in a series or 
sequence," — " in imitation, per- 
haps, of the three degrees of 
knowledge required by the an- 
cient mystagogues, the Logos 
Protrepticos, the Pcedagogos, the 



have rather adapted, than trans- 
lated, some of the innumerable 
types and tropes, with which in 
the opening of the Stromata the 
cause of eclectic philosophy is 
defended. 



CH. X.] THE ALEXANDRINE SCHOOL. 233 

Yet, as flowers and weeds, grapes and thorns, figs 
and thistles, had all grown promiscuously in the 
Gentile soil, the barren or pernicious concealing the 
fruitful tree from the mere casual observer : it fol-* 
lowed that the genuine Christian Gnostic must be The true 

° ... Gnostic. 

above all things an Eclectic. His spiritual taste 
must be educated. He must be accustomed to prove 
all things, that he may hold fast to what is good. 
Clement, in short, saw no incompatibility between 
profane and sacred learning. The former was^ in 
some sense- the handmaid of the latter — perhaps a 
necessary nandmaicl. For, as Sarah the mistress was 
barren, till she had borne a son to Abraham by 
Hagar, her maid ; so the Church, relying on simple 
faith and abhorring the profane touch of dialectic, 
philosophic and scientific culture, might find herself christian 
in the position of one who expects to gather grapes, 
without being at the pains to cultivate the vine. 11 

With views so perilously in advance of the religious Clement's 

/»-,.. n i.i •• ni errors. 

sentiment oi his times, and which anticipated the 
broadest modern schemes of liberal education, it is 
not to be wondered at that Clement's orthodoxy has 
been, and is still, an open question. That he some- 
times used inaccurate expressions with regard to the 
essentials of the Faith, and that in less important 
points he advanced many erroneous opinions, is 
beyond all doubt. 12 On the breaking out of the 

11 Even the physical sciences ral successive creations before 

are included in Clement's curri- Adam. Was this an anticipation 

culum. Stromat.lih. i. of modern geology? See Tille- 

M Bishop Bull defends his sub- mont, torn. iii. art 5. For an ex- 

stantial orthodoxy. Among the act account of his teaching, see 

notions imputed to him by Pho- Kaye's Clement of Alexandria, 

tins, who had a copy (perhaps a (John, Bishop of Lincoln,) and Cle- 

eorrupted one) of his Hypotyposea, mentis Alex. Op. omnia Gr. et 

now lost, was the theory of seve- Lat. ed. Potter, Oxon. 1715. 



234 HISTOEY OF THE CHUECH. [BK. H. 

Severian persecution he retired before the storm, 
and defended his conrse in this particular with argu- 
ments full of good sense, hut somewhat too elaborate 
* and ingenious. He has been much censured for his 
His advocacy of the vseudos. a species of " reserve" or 

pseudos. ,, -i , -i. „ . -i -i. .i it 

" white lie, m dealing with unbelievers. As a 
general rule, those who advocate reserve are the 
least given to it in practice. Clement was hardly 
an exception to this rule. The "lies" he had in 
view were that "economy" which dispenses meats 
and medicines in due measure and due Reason, and 
not any such deception as the word taken to the let- 
ter might imply. 13 In his system, however, human 
wisdom undoubtedly had too high a place ; and his 
pretensions to a gnosis or secret knowledge, unattain- 
able to the vulgar, savored too much of the arrogance 
of the Gnostic and new Platonic schools, 
origen He was succeeded by Ori«;en, u the Adamantine, 

A. »• 203. -, i & . -, t 

the man of iron soul, whose mind was, as the name 
Chalkenteros 15 suggests, a great thought-factory, — a 
marvel of rapid, easy, steady, and vigorous operation. 
He dictated to seven amanuenses, and is said to have 
been the author of at least six thousand different 
works. He wrote more, says S. Jerome, than an- 
other man could read. As the demand for thought- 
ful tracts must have been in some proportion to the 

13 See Blunt's Right Use of the Eusebius is very full ; Eccles. 
Early Fathers. While Clement's Hist See also Hnet's Origeni- 
meaning may be defended, his ana, and various other disquisi- 
language, it must be confessed, tions, appended or prefixed to 
might be made to countenance De la Rue's edition ; Origen, Op. 
almost any amount of fraud un- Omn. etc. Pariss., 1733. For a 
dertaken with a pious end in list of works on Origen, see Fa- 
view. The same is to be said of bricii Bibliotliec. Grate, torn. vii. 
some of the expressions of Origen. and Walch, Bibliothec. Patristic. 
See notes to Qieseler, § 63. p. 273. 

14 On the subject of Origen, ]5 S. Jerome so calls him. 



CH. X.] THE ALEXANDKINE SCHOOL. 235 

supply, there could be no stronger testimony to the 
wonderful intellectual activity of the times. In his 
life he was a strict ascetic. Going barefoot at all 
seasons, owning but -one coat, a vegetarian in his 
diet, and content with such sleep as he could obtain 
on a bare floor, he devoted his days to teaching, his 
nights to prayer and study of the Scriptures. He 
was but eighteen years of age when he began this J n d a e n T d °- 
course. The persecution, before which Clement re- &««>ism. 
tired, gave him occupation of a still more honorable 
kind. Many of his disciples were among the Mar- 
tyrs and Confessors. He visited them in prison, he 
stood by them before the tribunal, he comforted and 
encouraged them in the final conflict. It was unfor- 
tunate for him, and for his subsequent good name, 
that with such unquestionable zeal and self-devotion seif-wm. 
there was something of the alloy of a presumptuous 
hardihood. Though still a mere youth when ap- 
pointed by Demetrius to the Catechetical School, he 
seems to have taken counsel only of his own heart. 
Acting, for example, on what he afterwards acknowl- 
edged to be a hasty interpretation of the language 
of our Lord with regard to eunuchs, 16 he prepared 
many sorrows for himself, many scandals and dis- 
turbances for the Church at large. He urged, by 
way of apology for this act, that there were several 
females in his school — which exposed him to scandal 
and temptation. Both the act and the excuse show 

16 Matt. xix. 12. By Ms ill- tolic canons, 77,) unless they were 

advised act, Origen, according to self-inflicted. A deaf or* blind 

a wise canon of the Church, (see man, however, could not be made 

Apostol. canons, 21-24,) disquali- Bishop — "not as if he was by 

fied himself for entering holy this made unclean, but lest it be 

Orders. It may be noticed here an impediment to him in the du- 

that bodily blemishes were not ties of his office." 
made a bar to holy Orders, (Apos- 



236 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bK. II. 

an undue influence of the encratite spirit so prevalent 
at that time. 

iX>nic£ r ^ n sucn matters, Origen is the less excusable, in 
that he was a child of many prayers, and of a careful 
Christian nurture. One of the tenderest images of 
all antiquity is that of his father, Leonides, rebuking 
the precocity of his gifted boy, but stealing to his 
couch when he slept, that he might kiss a breast so 
manifestly a temple of the Holy Ghost. This excel- 
lent father was one of the first victims of the Severian 
persecution. Origen would gladly have shared his 

a martyr, martyrdom ; but his mother kept him at home by 
hiding away his clothes. He managed, nevertheless, 
to encourage his father by an admirable epistle ; in 
which, referring to his mother and seven children 
about to be left destitute, 17 he said : " Father, be firm 
in the Faith, and be not troubled on account of us." 

^mTnd One of the beneficial influences of that mixture of 

maSyrs. religious and secular teaching, which characterized 
the Alexandrine School, remarkably appeared in the 
case of Basilides, one of Origen's disciples, but still 
a heathen and an officer in the army. It fell to him, 
in the course of the persecution, to conduct the 
famous Potamioena to her execution. This noble 
virgin, equally celebrated for her beauty and her 
virtue, when all other appeals had failed to daunt 
her courage, was threatened with the horrible fate 

1T Origen was left in straitened stupendous intellectual labors, 

circumstances ; but in later life During the persecution under 

be found a fast friend in Ambro- Maximin, (a. d. 235,) he had oc- 

sius, a wealthy layman, whom he casion to exhort this noble friend 

reclaimed from the Valentinian to martyrdom : a wife and chil- 

heresy, who not only supplied dren, and large property, being, 

his moderal e wants in the way of as he urged, only a greater reason 

meat and clothing, but furnished for courage and steadfastness in 

him the means of carrying on his the faith. 



CH. X.] THE ALEXANDRINE SCHOOL. 237 

of being given over to the will of the brutal gladia- 
tors. To escape this outrage, she uttered some word 
deemed sacrilegious by the crowd, which brought 
upon her the penalty of immediate death. Basilides Basilides. 
led her away, but showed his sympathy by protect- 
ing her from the insults and abuses of the mob. She 
promised him her prayers, as a reward for his hu- 
manity. !Not long after her martyrdom, Basilides 
declared himself a Christian; and relating to the 
brethren how Potamisena had appeared to him three 
successive nights, in a dream, and had placed a 
crown upon his head, he was duly received, bap- 
tized, and shortly after enrolled in the army of the 
Martyrs. "With Potamisena suffered her mother Ma- 
cella. The baptism of fire that they received was 
imparted also to Herais, a female catechumen, an- 
other of Origen's disciples. The 'number of young 
women of high character who appreciated the teach- 
ings of this great master, 18 and many of whom were 
employed as copyists of his works, is creditable to the 
state of Christian society at that period. 

Of Origen's innumerable intellectual labors it is origen'g 
sufficient to say here, that they were in the direction labors, 
pointed out by his able predecessors. A disciple of 
Pantaenus and of Clement, a willing hearer of Am- 
monius Saccas, and full of genius, industry and 
hardy independence, he could not fail to exert a pro- 
digious influence upon the young mind of his times. 
His fame was known in the palace, and he corre- 
sponded, it is said, with the Emperor Philip. Mam- 
maaa, the mother of Alexander Severus, received 
lessons in Christianity from his mouth. An Ara- 

18 The lectures of Plotinus also, attended by many female disci- 
the famous ]Seo-Platonist, were pies. See Porphyr. Vita. Plotin. 



238 



HISTOEY OF THE CHURCH. 



[bk. n. 



His 

renown. 



bian prince paid him a special visit for the same 
purpose. He was an object of admiration, also, to 
the heathen philosophers. 19 On one occasion, at 
Rome, when he chanced to enter a hall where Plo- 
timis the celebrated JNeo-Platonist was lecturing, the 
latter rose from his seat and declined proceeding be- 
fore one who, as he declared, knew more than he 
could tell him. 20 But his most enduring fame, and, 
as Gregory Thaumaturgus 21 says, his "greatest gift," 
was in the sphere' of " an interpreter of the word of 
God." He searched with indefatigable zeal for the 
mystical, the moral, and the historic sense of Scrip- 
ture; 22 and in each of these departments was some- 
senses were in reference to the 
common notion of the threefold- 
ness of man : the body, (literal, or 
historic, sense) — the soul (moral 
sense) — the spirit (mystic sense). 
In some parts of SS. only one, 
in some two, and in some the 
three senses may be found. The 
most objectionable part of Ori- 
gen' s interpretation was, that, in 
his eagerness to show the neces- 
sity of the allegorizing process, 
he 'made many difficulties in 
Scripture which do not exist. 
The cases in which the mystic 
interpretation is allowable, ac- 
cording to Origen, are: (1) the 
various details of the ceremonial 
law; (2) all that is said about 
Jerusalem, Egypt, Babylon, Tyre, 
and other type-cities or type- 
names; (3) when the letter of 
Scripture is seemingly trivial, 
self-contradictory, or (like the 
Song of Solomon), capable of 
perversion and misinterpretation. 
On the perspective character of 
the language of the Old Testa- 
ment, see Lee on Inspiration, etc., 
Lect. iii. See, also, Peter Daniel 
Huet's Origeniana. Gieseler, Ch. 



19 Porphyry's eulogy is quoted 
by Eusebius, vi. 19. 

20 Porphyr. Vit. Plotin. This, 
however, may have been another 
Origen, a heathen philosopher, 
who was also a disciple of Am- 
monius. 

21 Who composed an Oratio 
Panegyrica in Origniem, highly 
esteemed for its glowing elo- 
quence. 

28 Practically only two senses ; 
for the mystic sense was consider- 
ed unattainable or only partially 
attainable to man, in the body: 
"even the simplest believers 
know that there are (profound 
meanings under the letter of 
Scripture), but what they are men 
of modesty and good sense con- 
fess themselves ignorant." Ori- 
gen cites particularly the story of 
Lot and his daughters, Abraham 
and his two wives, the two sisters 
that Jacob married, the arrange- 
ment of the tabernacle, etc., etc. ; 
in which he says, every one can 
see some type or figure, though 
he who imagines he has found 
the absolute and fixed meaning- 
is apt to be mistaken. The three 



CH. X.] THE ALEXANDKINE SCHOOL. 239 

times hurried by his ardor into dangerous extremes. 
By carefully distinguishing, however, the three 
senses from one another, he did as much for the 
cause of grammatical interpretation as for the alle- 
gorizing method so popular among the ancients. 
Enough remains of his labors to justify to posterity 
the esteem in which he was held. But his Hexapla, The 

tt -r» •-!-!• • i • • ii Hexapla. 

a polyglott Bible in six columns, containing the 
original text in Hebrew and Greek characters, with 
the four Greek versions of the Seventy, of Aquila, 
of Symmachus, and of Theodotion, is, with the ex- 
ception of a few fragments, unfortunately lost. 

Demetrius, the earnest and sober-minded Pastor orfgen 

} and De- 

of the Alexandrine Church, during whose episcopate metrius. 
this brilliant constellation of teachers appeared in 
the theological heavens, must have watched its rise 
and culmination with no little interest, and, perhaps, 
not without a shade of serious misgiving. However 
that may be, he for a long time acted with a liberal- 
ity seldom witnessed in such circumstances among 
men of his character and position. Why he at 
length departed from this course has been variously 
conjectured. Some ascribe it to envy of Origen's 
growing reputation. 23 Such motives are easy to im- 
pute, and to some minds easy to believe. They are 
difficult to prove, however, even with the advantage 
of personal or contemporaneous knowledge. With- 
out entering, therefore, into questions of this kind, 

Hist., § 63, gives Origen fall Many modern writers, though 

credit for his services to gram- aware that such acts and opinions 

matical interpretation. So also as those of Origen would have 

Meander, Ch. Hist, § v. condemned him in the eyes of 

23 Eusebius, in his extreme par- any Christian body that ever ex- 

tiality for Origen and the Pales- isted, are equally severe upon 

tine Bishops, is manifestly harsh the action of the Alexandrine 

in his judgment of Demetrius. Church. 



240 



HISTOEY OF THE CHUECH. 



[bk. II. 



Beginning 
of the 
quarrel, 
A. d. 215. 



Origen 
condemn- 
ed, A. D. 
231, 232. 



it is enough to notice the fact, that Origen' s latter 
days were clouded by a bitter contention with his 
Bishop, and with the Church of his native city. 

The quarrel began during a visit of Origen to 
Palestine, where, on the invitation of Alexander of 
Jerusalem one of his disciples, and Theoctistus of 
Csesarea, he preached in the churches of those pre- 
lates. Demetrius remonstrated against this, and 
Origen was summoned home. About thirteen years 
after, being invited into Greece, to assist in the refu- 
tation of certain heresies which had there obtained a 
footing, he procured letters commendatory from De- 
metrius and repaired to that country. Thence, un- 
der the sanction of the same letters, he passed into 
Palestine, where, without consultation or farther 
communication with his Bishop, he was ordained to 
the priesthood. Demetrius objected to this as a vio- 
lation of the canons. An angry correspondence fol- 
lowed. The Catechist was refractory ; the Bishop 
uncompromising. The former was defended by the 
clergy of Palestine. The latter, supported by two 
councils of the Alexandrine Church, issued a sen- 
tence of deposition and excommunication against 
Origen, on the ground of his false teachings and vio- 
lations of the canons ; an act in which the Roman 
Church concurred, though Palestine, Arabia, Phe- 
nicia and Achaia strenuously opposed it. Unde- 
terred by this, Origen continued his stupendous 
labors in Caesarea, in Greece, in Arabia where he 
confuted and converted the heretic Beryllus, and in 
other places, with great acceptance and great useful- 
ness to his numerous admirers. Afterwards, under 
the episcopate of Dionysius, the sentence against 
him seems to have been remitted, or at least forgot- 



CH. X.] THE ALEXANDRINE SCHOOL. 241 

ten. 24 He was finally a confessor in the Decian per- 
secution, 25 and died shortly after in the city of Tyre. 

Apart from the personalities involved in this contro- Meaning 
versy, there is much meaning in the course pursued quarrel. 
by the Church of Alexandria at so critical a period. 
On the surface, it may have been a mere quarrel be- 
tween two leading churchmen. At bottom, it was one 
important phase of a conflict ever going on between 
the conservative instinct and the spirit of progress. 26 
Origen was a Philosopher, Demetrius a Pastor. The 
former was large-minded and theoretic, the latter 
was practical and perhaps narrow-minded. Both of 
these classes have their uses in the world, but it sel- 
dom happens that they thoroughly and cordially un- 
derstand one another. In the times of Origen, espe- 
cially, the philosopher's cloak was still a novelty in 
the Church, and in the eyes of sober shepherds had 
much of the wolf-skin about it. Demetrius, doubt- 
less, was open to misgivings on this score. So long, 
however, as Origen taught merely in the character 
of a religious and philosophic layman, the prudent 
Bishop might verj properly refrain from any hasty 
interference. In the same way, so long as Origen did j^ a jJ on 
not seek to be admitted to the priesthood, there was 
no occasion for any public censure of the injudicious 
act by which he had become canonically disqualified 
for the office. But it was a different case when his 
conduct and his teaching were to be authorized, as it 
were, by the seal of holy Orders. Then it became a 

24 See Huet's Origeniana, lib. i. er, and outward circumstances 
iii. 10. only served to bring that hidden 

25 Book iii. ch. 3. cause into public notice, which 

26 Neander says, " The outward was the contrariety between Ori- 
cause of the controversy was the gen's Gnostic tendency and the 
hierarchical jealousy ofDemetri- anti-Gnostic." Hist, of Christian 
us ; but the real ground lay deep- Dogmas. 

11 



242 



HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. 



[be. n. 



Heresy- 
arrested. 



Influence 
in other 
quarters. 



matter of indispensable necessity to look more closely 
into the character of the influence he was so widely 
and powerfully exerting. 

Accordingly this was done. Many of his views 
were righteously condemned. 27 The Alexandrine 
School was arrested in a course, 28 which, without 
some such check, might have made it a mere nest of 
heretical speculations. 

On the other hand, in the Churches of Palestine 
where Origen was so warmly encouraged, the way 
was opened for habits of mind which led in the 
fourth century to Arian sympathies. His successors 
in the Catechetical School were Heraclas and Dio- 
nysius, both in course of time Bishops of Alexandria ; 
and, towards the end of the century, Pierius and 
Theognostus. Theodoras, afterwards called Gregory 
the Wonder-worker, Bishop of Neocsesarea in Pon 
tus ; his brother Athenodorus ; Pamphilus a learned 
Presbyter of Csesarea in Palestine, whose name was 
adopted by Eusebius the Church historian ; Firmili- 



2T It has nothing to do with 
our judgment of Origen's ortho- 
doxy, but deservedly weighs 
much in our estimate of his 
Christian character, that he was 
singularly modest in the expres- 
sion of his views. For this he is 
much praised by Huet and 
others. 

28 As it was, Clement and Ori- 
gen helped to give a spiritualistic 
tone to Alexandrine Theology. 
This was shown (1) in freedom 
of speculation (against, or beyond 
Scripture) on such subjects as an 
endless series of worlds, final sal- 
vation or at least salvability of. 
the damned, etherial character 
of the risen body, etc., etc. ; (2) 



in the emphasis laid on the doc- 
trine of the Logos, and in danger- 
ous theories in relation to that 
doctrine; (3) in placing all virtue 
and perfection in gnosis, a sort 
of dispassionate contemplation ; 
(4) in affirming intellectual sins 
to be worse than moral, etc. The 
Chiliast, and other sensuous here- 
sies, founded on a too close follow- 
ing of the letter of the Scriptures, 
were little favored in Alexandria. 
See Neander, History of Church 
dogmas, and Gieseler, Church Mix- 
tori-/, § 63. As Origen's mind was 
many-sided, his writings also con- 
tributed to the rationalistic bias 
which afterwards showed itself 
in Palestine and Syria. 



CH. X.] THE ALEXANDRINE SCHOOL. 243 

anus, the. distinguished and able Bishop of Csesarea 
in Cappadocia ; and Julius Africanus, one of the 
earliest of Christian chronograph ers ; were among his 
disciples or intimate friends. The character of such 
men is an argument in favor of the essential sound- 
ness of their teacher. It is a better argument, how- 
ever, for the general soundness and conservative and 
restraining influence of the common sense of the 
Church. Origen, in fact, both in his faults and in 
his merits, was considerably in advance of the times 
in which he lived. Opposition to his teachings was in ad- 
precipitated somewhat by his imprudences of con- the a ge . 
duct. Yet it hardly began fairly till the end of the 
third century, when Methodius, Bishop of Tyre, an 
eloquent but not very judicious writer, 29 opened a 
controversy that has continued at intervals to be 
revived with more or less bitterness, down to the 
present day. 

29 He was a martyr in the Dio- gins," some fragments of which 

clesian persecution, a. d. 311. remain in Epiphanius and Pho- 

His principal work is a eulogi- tius. Eusebius (possibly out of 

um on Virginity in dialogue form, partiality for Origen) makes no 

entitled " Banquet of Ten Vir- mention of him. 



BOOK III. 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHURCHES, 



FIRST TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY. 



A. D. 200-334 



BOOK III. 
CHAPTEE I. 

NORTH AFRICAN CHURCH. 

The African Church, a name not including Egypt, 
Cyrene, or any of the dependencies of the See of North 
Alexandria, had in the course of the second century 
extended the influence of the Gospel over two of the 
three great provinces of Northern Africa. 1 Its terri- 
torial limits embraced ultimately Africa Proconsu- 
laris, ISTumidia, and Mauritania. In these were some 
three thousand towns and villages, with a mixed 
population of Romans, Greeks, Jews, and Africans 
both of Punic and indigenous race. 

It was a vast and fertile region, rich in commercial 
and agricultural resources, stocked with innumerable ^{J* 04 ** 
slaves, 2 and haunted at the commencement of the people. 
Christian era by a prolific brood of abominable 
superstitions. In this respect it was, even more 
than Pome or Alexandria, a sink of the whole 
world. 3 Each race which had settled in the country 

1 Miinteri Primordia Eccles. portion of his wife's property : 
African. See also Schelstrate, Apuleii Apolog. p. 333. Elmenh. 
Eccles. Afric. ; and Morcelli 3 In Afris pene omnibus, nescio 
Africa Christiana. quid non malum . . . inhumani 

2 Apuleius mentions that there . . . ebriosi . . . fallacissimi . . 
were four hundred slaves on a fraudulentissirni . . . cupidissimi 



248 



HISTOEY OF THE CHURCH. 



[bk. in. 



Supersti- 
tions. 



When 
evange- 



had brought in with it its own peculiar rites ; and 
each imported rite the prurient imagination of Africa 
had invested with new horrors. Human victims 
were sacrificed to Baal, under the Roman name of 
Saturn. Maidens were devoted, amid lewd songs 
and games and lascivious rites, to the Vesta Meretri- 
cum, the Syrian Astarte. Magical rites, divination, 
necromancy, fetish-worship, had of course grown 
apace in so rank a soil. Nor were the morals of the 
people better than their religion. Cruelty, treachery 
and lust were national characteristics. A fanatical 
self-devotion, blood-thirsty, gloomy, insatiable in its 
greed for horrors, swayed the soul alternately with a 
frivolity hardly more human. So that, notwith- 
standing the strong bridle of Roman law, and the 
so-called civilizing influences of baths, theatres, and 
temples, the Cross, it is likely, was never set up on 
more unpromising ground. 

Who the first Evangelists were, and whence they 
came, is a question involved in no little obscurity. 
There is a confused tradition of Pentecostal voices, 
sounding their glad tidings along the coasts, or even 
in the interior ; and a vague rumor connects this 
early preaching with the names of Simon of Cyrene, 
Simon Zelotes, or, as some would have it, Simon 
Peter himself. Such traditions in themselves are of 
little value. It is not improbable, however, that 
some straggling rays of the great Pentecostal light 
had visited the Jews in this, as in all other parts of 
the Roman world ; and a few believers, gathered as 

. . . perfidissimi . . . quis nescit, flammarum, etc., etc. Salvian. de 

Africam totam obsccenis libidin- Provident., lib. vii. For much 

ran tsedis semper arsisse ? non ut more to the same effect see that 

terram ac sedem hominum, sed ut very satisfactory book, Morcelli 

JStnam putes impudicarum fuisse Afric. Christian. 



CH. I.] NORTH AFRICAN CHURCH. 249 

in other places from among them or their proselytes, 
may have formed a connecting link between Africa 
and the matrix religionis, the mother Clmrch at 
Jerusalem. 

However this may be, the African Church conld t c a ^ c h h e f ' 
lay no claim to a strictly Apostolic origin. The Car- 
thaginian fleet that sailed annually to Rome with a 
supply of corn, returned some time about the begin- 
ning of the second century with a more precious 
freight ; and Roman missionaries established an Epis- 
copal See at Carthage. 

As the African Church was thus among the latest its special 

/~i i -it i interest. 

to begin its course, Carthage being almost the only 
important See to which the phrase sine charta et 
atramentct could not be applied : so its career was in 
many respects the most rapid and most brilliant. It 
gave to the world a Tertullian, a Cyprian, and an 
Augustine, the three principal teachers of Western 
Christianity; and among minor writers, Minucius 
Felix, Arnobius and Lactantius. A still greater 
interest attaches to its history from the fact that the 
ante-Mcene period covers both its rise and the com- 
mencement of its decline. For though it afterwards 
continued to exist, and to exert a certain influence 
till the time of the Mohammedan invasion, yet its 
latter years, oppressed by a foreign yoke and embit- 
tered by barbarous dissensions, exhibited little more 
than the melancholy symptoms of a slow but inevi- 

4 The phrase is applied by S. position among the Africans to 
Irenaeus to barbarous nations, use Scripture and tradition as 
which had to receive the Truth synonymous terms. It also ex- 
orally, before they could be plains why, when looking for 
taught to read the Scriptures, customs or traditions not con- 
Carthage received the Truth and tained in Scripture, they turned 
the Scriptures simultaneously ; to Rome, as auctoritas prcesto — a 
which may account for the dis- witness close at hand. 
11* 



250 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [BK. IH. 

table decay. This Church, then, as being not a 
planting merely, but as it were a ripened fruit of the 
first age of Christianity, seems to merit a larger 
space in this section of our history than can be 
accorded to others, whose importance, though event- 
ually much greater, was of somewhat later date. 

its growth. Of its growth during the second century little is 
positively known. About the end of that period it 
comes suddenly into light: strong in faith, as wit- 
nessed by the martyrdom of the Scillitans in the 
Severian persecution ; strong in numbers and organi- 
zation, for at a council holden in Carthage, under 
Agrippinus the Primate of North Africa, as many 
as seventy Bishops were present, representing the 

a. d. 215. two Provinces of Africa Proconsularis and JSTumidia. 
It was in this Council that all baptisms administered 

a. d. 230. by heretics were declared invalid. A little later, the 
same stand was taken by many Churches in the East, 
especially in the great Council of Iconium. 

martyre ^ ne Scillitan martyrs were among the first who 

A.D.202. su ffered for 'the faith in North Africa. To the sim- 
plicity of their religion, which they pleaded and 
labored to commend to the Proconsul Saturninus, he 
opposed what he regarded as a still more simple 
creed. 5 "Swear," says he, "by the genius of the 
Emperor." He seems to have been somewhat 
anxious to save them, if he could, from the extreme 
penalty of the law ; and offered them for this purpose 
a respite of thirty days. The Scillitans, however, 
knew no path but the straight one. " Honor," they 
said, " they were always ready to give to the Empe- 
ror : but honor with prayer belonged to God only." 

5 A eta Proconsularia Martyrum ann. ccii ; given also in Munteri 
Scillitanorum ; Baronius, Annal. Primordia. 



CH. I.] NORTH AFRICAN CHURCH. 251 

They were sent back to prison to reconsider their 
resolve. But firm against the threats and deaf to 
the suggestions of the good-natured magistrate, 
twelve persons in all, nine men and three women, 
were beheaded ; giving thanks to God for His grace 
in allowing them to be enrolled in the glorious army 
of His martyrs. The kind of punishment inflicted in 
this case is an indication that the Scillitan witnesses, 
and perhaps the majority of believers in that region, 
belonged to the Latin part of the North African 
population. 

The persecution of the Christians, though com- Heathen 
menced under a certain show of law, soon fell into 
the hands of an excited populace, and was marked 
by all the usual features of diabolical cruelty and 
malice. The Christians were accused of incredible 
abominations. Their assemblies were represented to 
be the scenes of such orgies as heathenism unhappily 
had made familiar to men's minds, though in a purer 
state of society they could hardly have been imagined. 
The punishments were in keeping with the imputed 
crimes. By a refinement of barbarism, not unknown 
elsewhere, but which seems to have originated in 
Africa, Christian virgins, whom the cry ad leones 
could not daunt, were condemned to the vile service 
of the infamous leno?ies. 6 Such outrages were natu- 
rally regarded as signs of Antichrist. It is not to sgi 3 of 
be wondered at that they engendered in some minds chlist - 
a gloomy, or at all events visionary, temper, alien to 
the spirit of sober and true religion. 

6 Tertullian mentions such a Antichristi minas, et corruptelas, 

case in the last chapter of his et lupinaria, non timentes." — De 

Apologet. Cyprian alludes to it Mortal. In the later persecutions 

as a custom : " virgines, venientis such cases became quite common. 



252 HISTOEY OF THE CHURCH. [be. m. 

Enthu- Many circumstances conspired to foster snch a 

siasm. " x 

spirit, both among the Christians and among their 
idolatrous and savage persecutors. The first blood 
shed had. been followed by floods, tempests, meteors, 
subterranean thunders, and an extraordinary eclipse 
of the sun. By portents of this kind a fanatical 
temper was excited among the heathen, who at- 
tributed all calamities to the anger of their gods 
insulted by the Christians. On the other hand, the 
common Christian hope of the coming of the Lord 
was more vivid in times of peril, and sometimes de- 
generated into a morbid superstition. In a healthy 
state of mind, believers always prayed for the safety 

pro mora °^ ^e Empire, and pro mora finis : for a longer con- 

finis - tinuance, that is, of the world's season of repentance. 
It was a symptom of a dangerous enthusiasm, when 
to some, in their confident and exultant expectation 
of the end, this charitable prayer became unmeaning 
or distasteful. 7 

sensuous From causes of this kind the enthusiasm of Mon- 
tanus, already rife in many portions of the West, and 
naturally suited to the sensuous temper of the African 
and Africo-Eoman mind, found in Carthage and its 
dependencies a soil peculiarly fitted for its reception. 
This may be seen to some extent, even in that noble 
sample of the records of martyrdom, the Passion of 
S. Felicitas and S. Perpetua. 

Perpetua. Perpetua, a young matron of high social advan- 
tages, about twenty years of age at the time when 
she was called to suffer for the testimony of Christ, 

7 Montanistic Tertullian, e. g., tionem sseculi tendat." De Orat. 5. 

finds fault with some, because See, -also, that fearful outburst 

" protractum qnendam sceculo pos- so often cited against the early 

tulant, cum regnum Dei, quod ut Church, — do Spectaculn, c. 30 — 

adveniat oramus, ad consumma- " Quale spectaculum, etc." 



CH. I.] NORTH AFRICAN CHURCH. 253 

had an infant at her breast. She was obliged to 
withstand, moreover, the passionate threats and en- 
treaties of a doting father. She pointed the latter, Trials, 
with a somewhat provoking calmness, to a pitcher 
in the cell. "Father," she asked, "what do you 
call that vessel?" "A pitcher," he replied. "But 
can you say that it is not a pitcher ?" " Of course," 
said he, "I can not." "Then it is equally impos- 
sible for me to say that I am not a Christian." The 
old man left her in a fit of impotent rage and phrensy. 
At another time, when he came in "to cast her 
down," and in tears addressed her "not as daughter 
but as lady," she was deeply grieved because of his Grief of 
grey hairs, and " because he was the only one of her 
family that did not rejoice at her affliction;" and 
she comforted him, saying: "Nothing can happen 
at the tribunal, but what God wills ; for know, that 
we are not in our own power, but in the hand of 
God." He withdrew from her, however, over- 
whelmed with sorrow. 

A few days after the first interview, the prisoners f*?*}* m 
were baptized. On that occasion Perpetua was in- 
spired to ask nothing of God but the grace of bodily 
endurance. Still, the gloom and stifling heat of the 
jail were almost insupportable; and she was pining 
with anxiety for her half-famished babe. The Dea- 
cons managed to get them a few hours of recreation 
out of doors. The infant was allowed to stay in 
prison with its mother. When she was relieved of 
this subject of anxiety, "the prison immediately be- 
came to her a Pretorian palace ; so that she would 
rather have been there than in any other place." 

Felicitas, a slave, was great Avith child. As the PeUdtas. 
law forbade one in this condition to be put to death, 



visions. 



254: HISTOKY OF THE CHURCH. |bk. m. 

she was dreadfully afraid that she might not be al- 
lowed to share the martyrdom of her companions. 
But she was delivered in prison before her time, and 
was thenceforth full of joy. As she had exhibited 
any thing but fortitude when taken with the pains 
of travail, one of the jailors said to her: "If you 
make such an ado now, what will become of you, I 
pray, when thrown to the wild beasts?" She an- 
swered: "It is I who suffer now; at that time 
Another shall be in me, who will suffer for me, as I 
for Him." Some good-hearted Christian woman 
adopted the little innocent thus brought into the 
world. 
Dreams rj^ e ca ptives found favor with their jailors, and 
were visited by crowds of sympathizing friends. 
Blessed Deacons ministered to their wants. Doctors 
deemed it an honor to fall down at their feet. They 
were cheered, moreover, by ecstacies and visions. 
The celestial ladder, with a great dragon at its foot, 
and bristling on either side with swords and knives 
and hooks, led Perpetua to a garden, wherein sat the 
good Shepherd milking his ewes. Myriads robed in 
white were standing in shining rows about Him. 
" Welcome, child," was His address to Perpetua, as 
He gave her a bit of cheese. 8 She received the gift 
with joined hands ; the bystanders responded with a 
loud "Amen;" by all which she understood, that 
the end was rapidly approaching, and cheerfully put 
aside all thoughts of the present life. In another 
dream, Dinocrates, her young brother, who had 

8 This seems to indicate a syni- who attached a mystic meaning 

pathy with some of the Montanist to bread and cheese, m.a,j have 

notions. See Gieseler, § 59, note 9. existed before a sect was formed 

The peculiarity of the Artotyrites, on those peculiarities. 



CH. I.] NORTH AFRICAN CHURCH. 255 

perished of a cancer at the age of nine years, was 
delivered by her prayers 9 from the place of torment 
where she saw him. 

Li other visions the disorders of the times were Rebukes, 
unsparingly rebuked. The loquacity of the Africans, 
gathering noisily around their Bishop, was compared 
to the wrangling of a crowd of heathen just coming 
out of the circus. The day before the execution, the 
prisoners were allowed a, free hanquet ; an indulgence 
usually granted to persons condemned to death. 
They availed themselves of the opportunity, to cele- 
brate the Agape or feast of love. The crowd, who 
gathered around from motives of curiosity, were 
commanded to take good note of the features of the 
victims, that they might be sure to recognize them 
at the Day of Judgment. Some were exasperated 
at these appeals. Upon others the evident sincerity 
of the confessors was not without effect. 

When the final conflict came, the better feelings Final 
of the crowd so far prevailed as to spare the martyrs 
the profanation of appearing in the robes of Ceres 
and of Saturn, which it had been intended they 
should wear. " To preserve our liberty," said Per- 
petua, " we freely give our lives. See ye to it, that 
the bargain be not broken." The populace admitted 
the justice of the appeal. In a less commendable 
spirit, some of the male confessors addressed the 

9 On the efficacy of prayers for wife/' according to Tertullian, 

the dead, there were not precise should " pray for the soul of her 

notions, even among the more deceased husband, that the twain 

learned Christians. Among or- may be reunited at the first res- 

dinary believers, it is likely, urrection (the millennium), and 

there were very loose views, that in the mean time he may 

The only prayers of the Mnd have refric/erium" — a quiet and 

ordinarily sanctioned, however, refreshing rest : ad Uxor. See Abp. 

were pro dormitione ; e.g., "A ~Ushev,Ans.toC]tall.ofaJesuit,(i. t J. 



Answer 
prayer. 



Salvum 
lotum. 



256 HISTORY OF THE CHUECH. [bK. III. 

spectators, and especially Hilarian the Proconsul, 
with threatening looks and gestures ; for which they 
were ordered to be scourged. But it added to their 
joy, that their sufferings were thus made to conform 
more nearly to the Passion of the Lord. Finally, 
each underwent the death he had had the grace to 
t0 pray for. Saturninus, according to a desire he had 
more than once expressed, was exposed to the fury 
of all the wild beasts. Saturus had a particular 
horror of a bear, and the bear to which he was 
thrown refused to come near him. He was at last 
attacked by a leopard ; and as the blood gushed out, 
the populace shouted in derision of the Christian be- 
lief in the efficacy of martyrdom, /Salvum lotum, sal- 
vum lotum : he who was thus baptized being regard- 
ed as sure of his own salvation. The women, in 
consequence perhaps of the popular exasperation 
which the men had somewhat needlessly provoked, 
were divested of all their clothing, and hung up in 
nets to be tossed by wild cows. But at the sight of 
them in this condition, the crowd once more relented. 
They were allowed to clothe themselves. Perpetua, 
surviving the first attack of the infuriated animal, 
was conscious enough to draw her robe over the 
parts of her person exposed, and to bind up her 
hair ; but seemed otherwise as one just awaking from 
a dream. When told what she had suffered, she 
said to her brother and to a certain catechumen: 
" Stand fast in the faith, love one another, and be 
not offended at what we endure." "With the others 
who had survived the fury of the beasts, she was 
finally despatched with the sword. The rest re- 
ceived the fatal stroke in silence. Perpetua was 
woman enough to shriek as the weapon pierced her 



CH. I.] . NORTH .AFRICAN CHURCH. 257 

side ; but, immediately recovering, guided the hand Death of 
of the trembling gladiator to a more mortal spot. 
Perhaps, adds the notary, the unclean spirit was 
afraid of her ; and, without her own consent, so 
noble a lady could not have been put to death. 

The beautiful narrative 10 from which these inci- Montanist 
dents are gleaned, was written in part by Perpetua 
herself; the preface and conclusion being added by 
a coarser hand. Some touches in it betray, as has 
been said, a Montanistic bias. That the writer of the 
preface sympathized with the new prophets, there 
can be no question. " The Spirit," he observes, 
" was not poured forth upon early times only. The 
older the world is, the more novel and more startling 
the demonstrations of His power. And in the latest 
times of all, the more manifestly must appear the 
truth of the prediction, that the young men shall see 
visions and the old shall dream dreams." That these Fondness 
" latest times of all" were actually appearing, was a 
common and natural feeling amid the horrors of per- 
secution. Hence an eagerness for martyrdom, pass- 
ing the bounds of sobriety. Hence a fondness for 
ecstacies and visions, and an austerity of temper 
which sometimes clouded, without obscuring alto- 
gether, the simplicity and reality of the martyr's 
faith. 

It was probably about this time that Tertullian, 11 Tertuiuan, 
himself an epitome of the African religious mind, 135; 
conceiving a great disgust at the laxity and worldli- 
ness which he had witnessed among the Poman and 

10 Passio SS. Pe.rpetuce et Fe- tullianus ; on this subject see 
licitatis atque Sociorum ; given Kaye's Tertullian ; Neander's 
in Hunter's Primordia Ecc. Af. Antiqnosticus ; and Tertullian. 

11 Qu. Septimius Florens Ter- Op. etc. Nic. Rigalt. 1689. 



nat. a. d. 

ob. 
a. d. 217. 



258 



HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. 



[be. Til. 



Question 
of veils. 



Question 
of the 
crown. 



other Christians, boldly took the part of the " spiritu- 
als," as they called themselves, against the easier 
and more indulgent views of the " carnal" Catholics. 

There was a question, for example, as to the pro- 
priety of virgins being seen unveiled. The majority 
of the Church were content to let " custom" decide 
in matters of this kind. The stricter party were dis- 
posed to condemn the custom as scandalous and 
indecent, a sin against nature and the law of God. 
For awhile, the question was agitated without any 
serious breach of peace. At length, however, the 
contest day by day becoming more bitter, the un- 
veiled virgins, or " virgins of men" as they were 
called, began to be " offended" at " the virgins of 
God," and the latter, perhaps, were scandalized in 
turn ; so that things were tending fast to an open 
rupture. 12 

Or, to take another instance, a Christian soldier 
had on a certain holiday declined to wear the chap- 
let, usually worn on such occasions in honor of the 
Emperor. 13 The Spirituals approved. The more 
compliant Catholics regarded the man as scrupulous 
to excess, and even blamed him for exposing his 
brethren to needless persecution. Tertullian threw 
himself eagerly into these and similar quarrels of the 
day. A Roman by blood, a lawyer by education, 
but African and atrabilious in his temper ; full of 
genius moreover, intensely sensuous and realistic, 
more eager than reverential in his passionate devo- 
tion to the Truth, yet deeply and at times tenderly 

12 Tertull. de Veland. Virgin, the tract de Veland. Virginibus he 
2, 3. inveighs against it. In the one 

13 De Corona ; in which tract case custom was on his side, in 
Tertallian advocates unwritten the other not. See Hagenbach, 
tradition almost as heartily, as in Hist, of Doc, § 84. (Buch's Tr.) 



CH. I.] NORTH AFRICAN CHURCH. 259 

solicitous for the souls of men : he had seen much in 
Rome and Carthage to put him out of temper with 
the Christianity of the day, and to make him look 
habitually on the dark side of things. To idealize 
the past into a sort of golden age, needs only a vivid p^ e a n ° d 
imagination, or a feeble sense of facts. To see good 
in the present is a much harder task. It requires a 
supernatural gift of charity and patience. But in 
this virtue of patience, Tertullian, as he more than 
once acknowledged, was particularly deficient. It 
must be confessed, however, that by the end of the 
second century there were already facts in Christian- 
ity which good and earnest men found difficult to 
digest. 

The old landmarks betwixt the Church and the Decline of 

t • tit ' -t -i discipline. 

world were undergoing a gradual but visible remov- 
al. The believer and the infidel had, in the innocent 
customs of society, 14 — in dress, in fashion, in amuse- 
ments, in social freedom, — an amount of common 
ground which was every day enlarging, and which, 
by a convenient distinction between precepts of 
obligation and counsels of perfection, might admit 
of such an extension as to make Christian and 
Heathen ethics substantially the same. In morals, 
as in doctrine, the Apostolic ship was much covered 
by the waves ; the Apostolic net had many rents in 
it. This decline was rebuked,- but not remedied, by 
the followers of ATontanus. These and other ascetics, Pari * 
by appropriating the term spiritual to themselves, 
and the term jpsychical or carnal to the mass of their 



names. 



14 At this period converts were to inveigh against dresses, jewels, 
made in great numbers among trinkets of every sort, rare birds, 
the -wealthy middle class. In monkeys, lap-dogs, and other lux- 
Alexandria, especially, Clement uries that defrauded orphans and 
[JPoedagogus) found it necessary widows of their just support. 



260 



HISTOKY OF THE CHURCH. 



[bk. m. 



Spirituals 

and 

Psychics. 



Tertul- 
lian's 
parly, 
A. d. 201. 



Christian brethren, had caused both to be regarded 
as mere party words. And when religious phrases 
come thus to be perverted into shibboleths of party, 
their authority over the conscience is in a great 
measure lost. 

Tertullian, however, was too earnest a man to join 
in the ridicule which the inflated pretensions of the 
Spirituals had drawn upon them. He saw in them 
the advocates of a return to stricter ways. Their 
lives compared favorably with the somewhat friv- 
olous behavior tolerated among Catholics. They 
seemed to be reformers. And their wonderful suc- 
cess, — for the influence of Montanism had spread 
with a rapidity that seemed to rival the first eifusion 
of Pentecostal light, — gave plausibility to the claim 
of a special demonstration of spiritual Power. 

Under these circumstances, persuaded by Proculus 
a Montanistic leader, and influenced by the favor 
shown in Pome to Praxeas the Patripassian, Tertul- 
lian undertook, as he expresses it, the defence of the 
Paraclete, and so became separated from the Psychics, 
or Catholics. But it was not in his nature to be a 
mere follower in a sect. The heartiness and boldness 
which estranged him from one party, made him in 
time a separatist from the other. He and his co-relig- 
ionists in North Africa became, in fact, Tertullianists 
rather than Montanists. The congregation lingered, 
though gradually diminishing in numbers, till the 
times of S. Augustine ; 15 when, at last, " the few who 
remained came back into the Church, and transferred 
their Basilica to the care of the Catholics." 

How Tertullian and his party were regarded by 



15 S. Augustin. ad Quodvultdeum. Ilceres. 86. 



CH. I.] NORTH AFRICAN CHURCH. 261 

the orthodox of Carthage is not quite clear. He was His P osi- 
condemned in Rome ; he was anathematized, per- 
haps, by one of the Carthaginian Councils. 16 Still, a 
kindly feeling seems to have subsisted between him 
and the great body of the Church. His followers 
also experienced some indulgence. Fasting strictly 
and frequently, abhorring second marriages, insisting 
more than others upon clerical celibacy, shunning the 
fashions and amusements, and so far as possible the 
business of the world, looking with scornful pity 
upon the compliances and evasions of a carnal Cath- 
olicism, and fortifying themselves in all this by 
dreams, ecstacies and visions, with a lively hope of 
the speedy manifestation of the heavenly Jerusalem, 
they had too strong a hold upon the sympathies of 
believers to be easily or suddenly separated from 
them. In the course of time, however, they became 
more sour ; and it was from the bitter root of Phry- 
gian enthusiasm that sprang some of the wildest 
errors of North African religion. 

But in the meanwhile, Tertullian had gained aHismflu-- 

ence. 

place in the affections of all parties, from which no 
anathema has been able to dislodge him. Fait in 
ecclesia magna tentatio, says Vincent of Lerins : his 
position in the Church was indeed a great trial. By 
his plastic genius, and ready and rough vigor, he 
almost created the religious language of the West. 
He was a mighty champion for the Faith, against 
the subtle rationalism of Praxeas whom he forced to 
retract his errors, and against the Gnostic views of 

16 A sentence in his tract, de clena numerus episcoporum" — is 

pud'icit. — " ecclesia quidem delic- generally supposed to have heen 

ta donahit, sed ecclesia spiritus aimed at some Council that had 

per spiritalem hominem, non ec- condemned him. 



262 



HISTOEY OF THE CHUECH. 



Tbk. III. 



Religious 
earnest- 



The 
Church 

stronger 
than the 
Schools. 



Marcion, Hermogenes, Apelles and other disturbers 
of the times. He is the exponent of that mighty 
struggle against sin, that deep and earnest sense of 
the necessity of grace, that intense realism and indi- 
vidualism in matters of religion, which has remained 
characteristic of the Western mind. His unquestion- 
able services to the cause of orthodoxy, and still 
more to the cause of religious earnestness, 17 were no 
doubt appreciated by the mass of his countrymen ; 
and atoned in their eyes, as they have atoned in the 
eyes of posterity, for a multitude of philosophic and 
theologic errors. 

But it happened with this great master, as with 
the equally great Origen in the East, that the Church 
spirit of his times proved stronger than the influence 
of any individual spirit. The disciples of Tertullian, 
and especially S. Cyprian and S. Augustine, appreci- 
ated his merits without following him in his errors. 18 



17 Tertullian's mind was thor- 
oughly anti-gnostic, and his bias 
diametrically opposite to that of 
the Alexandrine doctors. His 
conceptions were sensuous in the 
extreme. Thus among his para- 
doxes he maintained, that God 
is corporeal — being unable to con- 
ceive that any thing without body 
could exist (which, however, was 
probably nothing more than a 
rough way of- asserting the per- 
sonality of God) ; that Christ 
(when he appeared to the Patri- 
archs) and the Angels were clothed 
in flesh ; that souls are propagated 
with the body ex traduce, and are 
themselves corporeal ; that wicked 
soids become demons after death, 
etc. From the same turn of mind 
he conceived of the grace of bap- 
tism as lodged in the water, to 
which he ascribed a sort of magi- 
cal operation — the water being, 



as it were, transubstantiated. Ex- 
pressions of this kind scattered 
over his works are capable of a 
charitable and orthodox interpre- 
tation ; but they show, none the 
less, the peculiarity of his mind. 
(It would be easy to show that the 
same bias has pervaded and still 
pervades the Western mind gen- 
erally.) His practical turn is seen 
in a mere enumeration of his 
writings — about shows, idolatry, 
marriage,- prayer, baptism, female 
apparel, veils, crowns, fasts, etc., 
etc. In. treating all such matters 
he took the austere side, but was 
as sensuous against abuses as 
others were for them. See Nean- 
der's Antignosticus. For Tertul- 
lian's paradoxes, see Essay of 
Pamel. prefixed to his Works. 

18 They partook not a little, 
however, of his peculiar bias. 



CH. I.] NORTH AFRICAN CHURCH. 263 

He exerted an influence upon the doctrinal develop- 
ment of his day, but he did not control it. 

With the death of Severus, the persecution in a season 
Africa, as elsewhere, ceased. An interval of forty a. d. 211.' 
years of peace, occasionally interrupted by temporary 
outbreaks, allowed the good seed and the bad to 
grow up together. The Church extended itself into 
the remoter Province of Mauritania. Councils were 
held, some of them attended by as many as ninety 
Bishops ; in one of which Privatus, probably a 
Bishop, was condemned for some heresy unknown. 

For the rest, Gnostic or Montanistic sects, unmo- Sects, 
lested so far as we can learn by a succession of 
indulgent and not very able Bishops, contended for 
the right of women to teach ; or endeavored to make 
sense of the incoherent utterances of the ecstatic 
prophetesses ; or, in the picturesque language of the 
times, killed the fish of Christ by forbidding them 
the water ; or used water instead of wine in the 
sacrament of the Lord's Supper ; or cultivated pecu- 
liarities of posture and of gesture ; or railed, as 
occasion served, against Bishops and other rulers. 19 
■On the whole, there seems to have been much of 
mutual forbearance. The Canons passed in Councils 
were directed mainly against the encroachments of a 
worldly spirit. That Bishops, Priests and Deacons 
were not to engage in secular affairs ; that the sons 
of clergymen were not to marry among infidels or 

19 Of the Aquarians, Quintil- further from the customs of the 

tans, A rtotyrites, and other absurd Church ; so that the decree of the 

sects, little beyond the name is council under Agrippinus, requir- 

known. It is probable enough, ing converts from them to be 

however, that as the Montanists baptized, was a necessary precau- 

and Gnostics became more and tion ; — the rite being either neg- 

more divided, they departed lected, or improperly performed. 



Spirit of 
the world. 



264 



HISTORY OF THE CHUECH. 



[be:, in. 



Drift of 
Church 
Laws. 



heretics ; that no one should be ordained till he had 
made Catholic Christians of his own household ; that 
virgins, deprived of their natural guardians, should 
be committed to the care of grave elderly females : 
these, and similar laws, show the drift of the legisla- 
tion and of the temptations of the times. Of other 
matters, beyond occasional names added probably 
through popular violence to the roll of Martyrs, so 
little record remains, that until the reign of the 
Emperor Decius and the troubled episcopate of S. 
Cyprian, the thread of African Church history be- 
comes almost invisible. 



CHAPTER n. 



CARTHAGE AND S. CYPRIAN. 

Shop* When Cyprian, 1 a convert from heathenism, and a 

a. d. 243. man Q f wea ith, education and high social standing, rose 

by rapid steps from the grade of a catechumen to that of 

the Episcopate of Carthage and the Primacy 2 of North 



1 At his baptism he adopted 
the name Crccilius in gratitude to 
an aged Presbyter of that name, 
who had been instrumental in his 
conversion ; so that his full name 
reads T/iascins Ccccilius Cypria- 
vi/s. His life, or rather his 
eulogy, was written by Pontius, 
his deacon; but his public acts 
are to be found in a more authen- 
tic form in his own spirited writ- 
ings. See Toole, Life and Time* 
of S. Cyprian ; S. Cajcil. Cypri- 
an. Op. Omn. a. Joanne Fello — 
accedunt Annates Cyprianici a 



Joanne Pearson, et DisaertA- 
tiones Cyprianic. Henric. Pod- 
well. Amstelodam. 1*700. Cypri- 
ani Op. Genuina, Goldh. Lips. 
1838. 

2 In the days of Agrippinus, 
(a. r>. 215,) there seems to hare 
been but one primate in North 
Africa. By the middle of the 
century there were three, Car- 
thage, however, still holding the 
first place. The primacies of 
Numidia and Mauritania were 
attached to no particular See, 
but were given to the oldest 



CH. II.] CARTHAGE AND S. CYPKIAN. 265 

Africa, he found the Church, from causes already 
alluded to, in a state of considerable disorder. 

A factious spirit extensively prevailed, and^ scan- state^ 
dais were rife among Laity and Clergy. The Yirgins church, 
and Confessors, — regarded more and more as the flow- 
er of Christianity, and treated for that reason with a 
perilous indulgence, — were not a little crazed by the 
flattery, which even the Bishops, when they ventured 
to reprove them, could not prudently withhold. 

Of the Yirgins, some were petulant in behaviour Bad con- 

n r> n »t duct of the 

and immodest in attire. 3 So far from veiling them- virgins, 
selves from the gaze of a profane world according to 
the strict notions of Tertullian, they seem to have 
been living almost without rule. They wasted their 
time ; they spent their money capriciously ; they 
dressed and painted to such excess that, " when God 
looked for the faces of His elect, He saw only the 
false colors and gewgaws of the devil." Others of 
them became notorious as gossips. They were wont 
to gad about from house to house ; and delighted in 
the wanton m erry-maldngs which African society 
tolerated and encouraged at marriage feasts. Some 
preferred the heathen to the Christian rule of de- 
cency, and did not scruple to be seen among the 
unblushing rabble of both sexes that frequented the 
public baths. Their manners, in short, were not 
only scandalous, but — from a modern point of view, 
and without reference to the omnipotence of fashion 
in determining questions of decorum — they might be 

Bishops. For the powers of the graphs I follow S. Cyprian and 

Primate, (which were strictly Tertullian, though the ardent 

limited), see Miinter. Primord. censors of the vices of an age 

ix. 2. are not always good authority 

3 S. Cyprian, de habitu Virgin, as to the extent of the prevalence 

In this and the following para- of those vices. 
12 



266 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. III. 

tlionglit inconsistent with any sense at all of Chris- 
tian obligations. 

vhginlty ^ ne Virgins, in fact, had in very many cases mis- 
taken their calling. Under all the circumstances of 
the times, it was natural enough that this should be 
frequently the case. Yirginity was not only an 
honorable state : it was free from care. At a time 
when households were divided on the subject of 
religion, and when, owing to the ubiquitous pressure 
of a filthy but .to young persons fascinating idolatry, 4 
the rearing of children in Christian habits presented 
difficulties without number : B domestic life was often 
a bitter servitude; marriage involved the gravest 

its perils, perils and temptations ; and celibacy was regarded 
as not only more safe to the individual, but more 
fruitful to the Church, than any other condition. It 
was popular on prudential as well as on enthusiastic 
grounds. It was sought, therefore, with avidity by 
some who had no natural fitness for it. But being 
sought thus, it was in many cases abused. Its free- 
dom from care became an occasion of perilous self- 
indulgence. Its dignity ministered to vanity and 
pride. Even its purity was by a strange freak of 
conscience regarded as an athletic or agonistic vir- 

4 S. Augustine de civitat. Dei, Tunc (mulier) spretis atque cal- 
ii. 2G, draws a frightful picture catis divinis numinibus, in vim 
of the obscenities of heathen wor- certse religionis, mentita sacri- 
ship." lega pras sumption e Dei quern 

5 Hence Tertullian's main ob- prsedicaret unicum, covflcfis ob- 
jection to infant-baptism. Of the servationibus vanis, fallens omnes 
servitude incident to domestic life homines, et miserum maritum 
in semi-heathen society, the same decipiens, rnatutino mero et con- 
writer speaks feelingly in many tinuo stupro corpus mancipat. 
places: ApologeL 3; ad uxor. ii. 6 In illis largiter floret ecclesias 
4, 6. To heathen husbands, the matris gloriosa foecunditas : S. 
antelucan meetings were particu- Cypr. de habit, virgin. 

larly offensive. Says Apuleius; 



CH. n.] CARTHAGE AND S. CYPRIAN. 267 

tue, tlie more perfect in proportion as it challenged 
or solicited temptation. 

From similar causes, the insolence of some of the confes- 
Martyrs or Confessors had become another crying 
sin of the times. 7 No Bishop or Presbyter, nor so 
far as we can learn any other distinguished person, 
had so far suffered in North Africa. 8 The victims, 
therefore, it is probable, were too often of that class 
which courted persecution. 9 But they were none the 
less objects of popular and feminine idolatry. Their 
wounds and stripes were badges of honor. They 
went in and out as a privileged class. And as their 
ranks, even in times of peace, were constantly re- 
cruited through the wantonness of the mob and the 
culpable indifference of the magistrates, they be- 
came a sort of irregular third power, having- an in- T h ^ ir 

~ . influence. 

fluence as great as that of the Clergy, without a cor- 
responding sense of responsibility and duty. The 
evil was increased by the popular belief that mar- 
tyrdom, or in its degree confessorship, was- a plenary 
atonement for every kind of sin. 

To what extent worse vices obtained among a cer- sisters of 

the clcrETY". 

tain portion of the Clergy, and among that class of 
devotees, male or female, married or unmarried, who 

7 Tertullian thus indignantly fully seen in S. Cyprian's Epis- 

suras up the powers granted "by ties. 

Zephyrinus Bishop of Rome to 8 So says Deacon Pontius in 

these Confessors : At tu jam et in his life of S. Cyprian. 

Martyres tuos effundis hanc po- 9 The quiet way in which Hip- 

testatem, ut quisque ex consen- polytus describes the effort of 

sione yincula induit, adhuc mol-- Callistus to recover his credit 

lia in novo custodise nomine, among the brethren, by making 

statim ambiunt moechi statim a disturbance in a Jewish Syna- 

adeunt fornicatores, jam preces gogue and thus exposing himself 

circumsonant, . . . . et inde com- to martyrdom, shows that cases 

municatores revertuntur, etc. The of that kind were not uncommon, 

insolence, tyranny, and presump- See chap. 4 of this Book, 
tion, that naturally followed, are 



268 HISTOKY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. m. 

set up their chastity as an idol of vain-glory, and 
took a giddy pleasure in hanging over the pit from ' 
which they professed to have escaped, it is needless 
to inquire : the cases actually mentioned by early 
writers being few in comparison with the severity of 
their strictures on the subject. 10 The sufiintroductce, 
virgins who lived as sisters with unmarried priests, 
were a nuisance against which sermons, canons, and 
anathemas were for a long time ineffectual. In des- 

TJe Agape pite of all precaution s, the Agape, a most beautiful 
but alas ! a most vulnerable feature of the early 
Church system, was* accompanied with disorders 
which even at this period broke out from time to 
time, and which at length led to intolerable abuses. 
In Tertullian's day such evils were deeply felt. In 
S. Cyprian's they had to be deplored cum summo 
animi gemitu et dolore. 11 

self de- In excesses of this kind there was probably less of 
intentional hypocrisy than of enthusiastic self-decep- 
tion. Conscience, like. the needle in the compass, is 
true to its trust only in a certain equilibrium of the 
soul. In the condition of the early Church, at cer- 
tain periods, there was much to disturb this even 
balance, and to bring on a state of mind in which 
extravagance and absurdity became more or less the 
test of religious earnestness and reality. 

10 That the ahuse was an ohstin- was still a Catholic, tells a differ- 
ate one, however, is shown by the ent story. In the one case he 
number of canons that had to be looked upon the Church with an 
framed against it: I Oarthagin- Apologist's eye, in the other, 
iens. can. 3; II, can. 17; IV, can. with that of a censor: in the one 
46; Niccen. can. 3; Ancyran. case he considered the general 
can. 19. See Dodwell. Dissertat. aspect of things, in the other he 
Cyprian, iii. was looking at particular defects. 

11 Tertull.de Jejun;adv. Psychic. The most philosophic as well as 
17: S. Cyprian Ep. vi. Pariss. the most charitable judgment is 
Tertullian, however, in his that which is made from the for- 
Apolog. (39), written when he mer point of view. 



CH. n.] CARTHAGE AKD S. CYPRIAX. 269 

It is not improbable, however, that there were other 

V1CG3 

those among the Africans, whose hypocrisy was of a 
cooler and more calculating kind. Avarice had its Avarice, 
place among the vices of the Clergy. There was 
much traffic in sacred things. In the strong and 
wholesome language of the most eminent censor of 
the times, the serpent, condemned to eat dust and to 
crawl upon the ground, had dragged many priests 
with him into the same degradation. Some were 
entangled in secular affairs. From a cupidity dis- 
graceful to themselves, or from a negligence of their 
support discreditable to the Church, even Bishops 
left their Sees, and engaging actively in mercantile 
pursuits, acquired an ill name as usurers or sharpers. 12 
A natural result of all this was that sect feeling and world- 

llDCSS 

party spirit grew up among the Laity. Church 
rulers were despised, Church laws set at naught. 
Mixed marriages were common. Matrons gave 
themselves to worldly cares and pleasures; and to 
please their husbands became extravagant in dress 
and lukewarm in religion. Heathen shows and 
feasts were frequented with little scruple. Catechu- Frivolity. 
mens put off their baptism that they might be the 
more free to sin. The Church's pensioners, the 
poor, were grudgingly supported. The pious fervor 
which good men had really felt, and which hypo- 
crites had found it necessary to feign as a tribute to 
religion, was beginning to die out ; and faith was 
sinking into a profound and ill-omened slumber. 13 

12 S. Cyprian, de lapsis, 6. Poole, in his Life and Times of S. 

13 Taylor's Early Christianity Cyprian, very properly remarks : 
makes a sophistical use of such " What can be more satisfactory 
facts. The Church is charged proof of the purity of the Chris- 
\rith vices against which she was tian Church, as a. socu ty, from any 
contending. On this subject Mr. particular vice, than the indig- 



270 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. III. 

eieSld? Under these circumstances, the election of S. Cy- 
prian to the Episcopate of Carthage, against the vig- 
orous opposition of five leading Presbyters of the city, 
was a happy instinct on the part of that majority by 
which he was chosen and almost forced into the office. 
As his character was well known, it was also a pledge 
that the evils above mentioned were rather accidents 
of the times, than things encouraged or tolerated by 
the spirit of the Church. 

His fitness jj e was a m an remarkably well fitted for the work 

for his «/ 

work - that lay before him. Converted to Christianity in the 
prime of life and in the full maturity of his powers, 
by one of those sudden revolutions in which the pas- 
sage from darkness to light is like the dropping of 
thick scales from the eyes, he had no room for re- 
serves or for lingering regrets. By a mighty Hand 
he had been led forth in haste from the bondage of 
corruption. 14 He brought with him into the Ministry 
all the freshness of first love ; giving himself wholly 

nant reprobation of that vice by ever freeing myself, etc. But when 
all who hint at it, and its denun- the filth of my past sins was wash- 
ciation by several Councils ?" To ed away by the waters of Baptism, 
this it may be added, that some the pure and serene light from 
of the worst sins sprang then, as above infused itself into my whole 
now, from that abuse of private spirit; when my second birth of 
judgment or private conscience, the Spirit had formed in me a new 
which the Church may censure man, all at once what had been 
but cannot possibly prevent. Al- doubtful before, became certain ; 
most all the Encratites were per- what had been shut was opened ; 
sons of a singularly independent into the darkness light shined ; 
turn of mind. If the maxim of that was easy which before was 
S. Ignatius, " Do nothing without difficult, and that only difficult 
the Bishop," had been heeded in which before was impossible ; and 
all cases, we should never have now I knew that it was the earth- 
heard of Origen's insane act, or ly and mortal which had held me 
of such follies as those of the in the bondage of sin ; but that 
mbintroduetcE. the Holy Spirit of God had ani- 
14 " So entirely was I immersed mated me with a new and better 
in the deadly atmosphere of my nature." Ad Donatum de Grot. 
former life ... that I despaired of Dei. Ep. i. Pariss. 



CH. II.] CARTHAGE AND S. CYPRIAN. 271 

to it, and disposing of his handsome private property 
in the same way as he dispensed the revenues of the 
Church,— namely, as a steward rather than as anj^ 
owner. 15 He was eminently practical in all his views. 
With a benevolence which endeared him to the poor, 
and a remarkable suavity of manner, he had much of 
the strong clear-headedness, verging on severity, of the 
old Roman temper, — the masculine good sense of Ter- 
tullian, 16 without his brilliant and versatile genius. 
His saintliness, therefore, was of no artificial or con- 
ventional type. It was the consecration of a firm will, 
manly instincts, magnanimous disposition, and of a 
mind as politic and sagacious as it was earnest and 
intrepid, to the special task which the untowardness 
of the times, and perhaps the negligence of his pre- 
decessors, had suffered to accumulate for him. 

And this task was the revival of discipline in the His ^ 
Church. If reform, strictly speaking, had been need- mission, 
ed, Cyprian was the man for the work of a reformer. 
As it was, the shortcomings and excesses of the day 
were rather the abuse of a good inheritance, than any 
constitutional or radical disease. There was no lack 
of wholesome rules. There was no want, if it could 
only be turned in the right direction, of an earnest 
and fruitful though undisciplined Christian spirit. To 
arouse that spirit, to bring it to bear upon the enforce- 
ment of the canons, to chasten and direct it, to curb its 

15 Pontius says that he gave all 16 Tertullian was his favorite 

his goods to the Church ; but as author. When he said " Da mihi 

we learn afterwards that his prop- magistrum," it was always known 

erty was confiscated in the Decian what book he meant. With such 

persecution, it seems probable that a master, Cyprian's rapid profi- 

he kept the administration of it in ciency in the knowledge of the 

his own hands. Indeed, as Bishop, Scriptures is not so wonderful as 

he could hardly have done other- (considering his late conversion) 

wise. it might at first sight appear. 



272 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [BK. III. 

extravagances without impairing its true strength, was 
the object, which with singular clearness of perception 
and tenacity of purpose S. Cyprian kept before him. 

foi°ces Dg ^ n l°°king around for the means of carrying out this 
purpose, he found the real working power of the 
Church practically distributed among three classes. 
There were the Clergy, headed by the Bishop, but 
considerably impaired in influence by the prevalence 
of party spirit ; the Laity, represented in the North 
African Church by the Senior es pqpuli, 17 a sort of 
lay-elders, who acted with the Clergy in all matters 
of discipline and Church business; and lastly, the 
Martyrs, Confessors, Virgins, and the like, — an ir- 
regular semi-clerical third power, 18 — the weight of 
which, however, was generally thrown into the scale 
of popular opinion. Theoretically, the Bishop was the 
head of this system. Practically, each class had a 
voice of undefined potency. Nothing without the 
People was as operative a rule, as Nothing without 

Balance of tf le JUshop. There was, in truth, a practical balance 
of Church powers which custom had established, 
but which neither custom nor theory had accurately 
defined. In the Word and the Sacraments the Clergy 
were supreme. In the choice and maintenance of 
the Clergy the People ruled. In matters of discipline 

17 President probati quique se- power, and had even more au- 
niores, honorem istum non pretio thorit}?- and weight than Presby- 
sed testimonio adepti: Tertull. ters or Bishops." In confirmation 
Apol. c. 39. of which he quotes Tertullian: 

18 Of this third power in the Quid ergo ? si Episcopus, si Diaeo* 
Church, Albaspineus, quoted and nun, si Vidua, si Virgo, si Doctor, 
confirmed by Schelstrate, speaks si etictm Martyr lapsus a reguld 
thus : " The ancient Church had fuerit : ubi pluris facere Martyrea, 
nothing- rare or precious in her quam Episcopos et Presbyteros, 
gift, that she gave not to Mar- atque aliquid supra Episcopum 
tyrs ; so that, while they lacked addere videtur. Schelstrate, Ec- 
the ministerial character, they cles. African, ii. 4. 
became lay-Bishops, at least in 



power. 



CH. n.] CARTHAGE AND S. CYPRIAN". 273 

both were consulted ; both had a voice ; and against 
the express will of either nothing conld assume a 
legal or binding form. 19 

Cyprian did not attempt a readjustment of this c ^ c I i an ' 3 
system. He took it as it was, and conscientiously 
worked with it. 

When it was necessary, therefore, for himself to 
act, he laid much stress, as was right and natural, 
upon episcopal prerogative. "When he had to work 
through the popular element, he spake in equally 
high terms of the dignity and responsibility that lay 
upon the People. In the same spirit, he magnified 
true •martyrdom, he exalted true virginity ; though 
the Martyrs and Virgins sometimes were but scourges 
in his side. On the other hand, he disparaged no 
class ; he elevated none at the expense of other 
classes. The Church to him was a living body com- 
posed of many living forces. To enable each force ah classes 
to live and work with freedom, 20 but to bring all at exa 

19 Of the many proofs of this, I the clergy and the people," that 
select two: S. Cyprian, in his 11th "he makes the Church to be 
Ep., fratribus implebe consistent- superior to the Bishop,'' — which 
bus, speaking of the case of the is a mistranslation of Cyprian's 
lapsed: "Cum pace nobis omnibus words; but contends that "this 
a Domino prius data ad ecclesiam man of unquestionable excellence 
regredi coeperimus, tunc examina- and worth . . . yields to circum- 
bmitur singula prceseutibus etjudi- stances when he admits associates 
cantibus vobis." See same Ep. in the government of the Church, 
and the tract cle Lapsis, passim, but speaks out the sentiments of 
In the Acta Purgationis Cceciliani his heart when he extols bishops, 
(S. Optati Op. Dupin, p. 169), the etc." That is, Mosheim takes 
following direction is given : half of Cyprian's words as honest, 
Adhibete conclericos et seniores and rejects the other half as mere 
plebis ecclesiasticos viros, et in- diplomacy; a process by which 
quirant diligenter, quae sint istae any man may be proved to be 
dissensiones. any thing that a hostile critic 

20 Mosheim, in his one-sided and chooses to make of him. In the 
disingenuous remarks on this sub- same way, Mosheim sees in Cy- 
ject, acknowledges that Cyprian prian nothing but contradictions 
" attributes mu^h importance to and confusion of ideas. But the 

12* 



274 HISTORY PF THE CHUECH. [bk. m. 

the same time under that strong control, without 
which freedom and even life is an impossible chimera, 
was, so far as he had a. theory, — which, being emi- 
• nently a man of action, it is probable he had not, — 
the substance of his theory of Ecclesiastical discipline 
and order. 

A few instances of his management of particular 
cases that came before him, may here be mentioned 
as illustrations of this point. 

Rogatian, an aged Bishop, consults him about the 
Examples, case of a contumacious Deacon. Cyprian, in answer, 
points out the canonical power to degrade the of- 
fender ; but recommends a further trial of patience 
and forbearance. Geminius Yictor, an ecclesiastic, 
had violated the canon which forbade dying men to 
make the clergy executors or guardians. 21 Cyprian 
caused the canon to be enforced. The only punish- 
ment provided for in such cases was the post-mortem 
sentence, that " no oblations should be made for his 
death ; no prayer nor sacrifice for his repose." His 
name, in other words, was stricken from the diptychs. 
He was to have no part in that solemnAommemora- 
tion of the departed, which was one of the marked 
features of the early Eucharistic Service. 22 An actor, 

contradiction is merely, that Cy- names written in " the Book of 

. prian's language continually con- Life." All believers, after their 

tradicts Mosheim's interpretation departure, were probably men- 

of that language. Historical Com- tioned once in the Eucharistic 

mentaries, vol. ii. § 24. Service. Afterwards some were 

21 In such cases, the Clergy excluded by way of discipline. 
were obliged by the civil law to Martyrs became entitled to a per* 
accept the responsibility, and thus petual commemoration. This ens- 
became entangled in secular con- torn, like many other similar prac- 
cerns. tices, had a wholesome operation 

22 rpj ie diptychs were properly for awhile, but degenerated into 
the roll of all who as " citizens of abuses and superstitions. See Dod- 
the Heavenly City" had their well, Dinsertat. Cyprian, v. 



CH. n.] CARTHAGE AND S. CYPRIAN. 275 

who after baptism continued to teach, though not to 
practise his art, was commanded to desist. It was 
better, Cyprian reasoned, that one should live on the 
Church alms or even starve, than earn a livelihood 
by a scandalous and perilous profession. In number- 
less such cases Church rulers had to struggle against 
the encroachments of the spirit of the world. In struggle 
this struggle they had the canons on their side, and world, 
the general sentiment of the Church. But on the 
other side there were considerations of temporary 
expediency, which were already beginning to make 
the canons practically a dead letter. 

With regard to the great scandal of the suhintro- ? iT &™ 

O o bound to 

ductce, the Bishop was equally decided. " ~No one ™j™y 
can be secure who exposes himself to danger with- than give 

J- ° scandal. 

out need : God will save no servant of His from the 
devil who puts himself gratuitously in the way of 
the devil's snares." If any professed virgins found 
themselves unfitted for that state, they should not 
hesitate to marry. If they declined this remedy, and 
persisted in giving scandal, they were to be capitally 
punished. For under the old law, as Cyprian rea- 
soned, such offenders were slain with the carnal 
sword : now, they should be slain with the spiritual 
sword, — they should be put to death by being put 
out of the Church. Accordingly, he approved of the 
sentence of excommunication passed upon a certain 
Deacon, who had offended in this way ; a decision 
in which, as usual in such cases, 23 the Presbyters of 
Carthage were consulted and concurred. 

But the cause of discipline, with the chastisement 

23 " A primordio episcopatus Sicut honor mutuus poscit, in 
mei statui, nihil sine consilio ves- commune tractabimus." Epistol. 
tro m ea privatim sententia gerere. v. Pariss. 



276 



HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. 



[bk. m. 



Dreams 

and 

visions. 



warnings of the disorders so prevalent every where, was be- 
ment. coining too weighty a task for any earthly prelate. 
As S. Cyprian had felt from the beginning of his 
episcopate, and as he had seen, indeed, in visions 
divinely sent, a time of thorough sifting was nigh at 
hand. These presentiments of coming judgment, 
with confident predictions based npon them, were a 
decided feature of what may be called the inner 
religious history of the early Church. 24 They are 
not uncommon in all ages of the world. In S. 
Cyprian's case, such monitions were allowed no 
little force in determining his conduct. In propor- 
tion, therefore, as he felt the forewarning shadow of 
a divine judgment upon the Church, — " to cauterize 
her wounds, to purge her humors, to nerve her whole 
frame,"— he was the more earnest in urging upon all 
her members the necessity of self-judgment. 25 . 

When the expected storm came, it raged more 
widely, more furiously, and with a more decided 
effort to exterminate the Church, than any similar 
event before. The reign of some of the preceding 
Emperors, and especially of Philip, had given the 
Church a foretaste of the deceitful sunshine of impe- 
rial protection. Philip, stained with many crimes, 
but with religious feeling enough to make him 



Eighth 

persecu 

tion. 



24 " Sancto Spiritu suggerente, 
et Domino per visiones mvltas et 
manifestas adinoncnte" — was the 
formula of a Carthaginian Council, 
a. d. 252. These visions were 
ridiculed by many. As Cyprian 
says, (Epistol. ad Florentinm Pu- 
pianum,) "I know that dreams 
and visions seem frivolous to 
some; hut only to those who 
would rather believe against the 
priests than believe with them." 



On this subject, see Dodwell, Dis- 
sertat. C>/p. iv. 

26 Origen, about the same time, 
was predicting persecutions, on 
the ground that they were needed, 
and from his foreseeing "that the 
downfall of the state religion" 
would be considered by many 
Emperors disastrous to the Em- 
pire. See Meander's Church His- 
tory, § i. part ii. 



CH. II.] CARTHAGE AND S. CYPRIAN. 277 

superstitions, had even desired to have a part in the 
prayers of the Church ; and, it is said, had gone 
through the form of penance required in such cases. 26 
He was supplanted by Decius, who, partly from Deci ^ or 
hatred of a system favored by his predecessors, and a- p- 249! 
partly from a desire to revive the memory of the old 
Roman glory which he attributed to the favor of the 
gods, proceeded to a determined and systematic per- 
secution. His edicts to that effect were sent forth- 
with into all the principal cities. 

Fabianus, Bishop of Some, was amono; the earli- Fabianus 

7 i ; ~ a martyr. 

est victims. The post he had held was too offensive 
to the Emperor, and consequently too perilous, for 
any immediate successor. It remained vacant, there- 
fore, for more than one year. 

When the imperial edict reached Carthage, a court Cyprian 

. . .-. .. . retires. 

of inquiry was appointed, consisting of a magistrate 
and five citizens, and a day was set for Christians to 
clear themselves by sacrificing to idols. Many- 
availed themselves of the interval thus allowed, and 
withdrew into the country. Among these was Cy- 
prian himself. Admonished by a dream, and justi- 
fied by the common interpretation of our Lord's 
direction for such cases, 27 he hid himself from the 
tempest and awaited other times. He was pro- 
scribed by the magistrates, and his goods confis- 
cated. From his place of retreat, however, he kept 
a watchful eye upon Church affairs in Carthage, and 

26 Euseb. vi. 36. That an Em- The reality of his faith is, of 

peror like Philip, addicted to course, another question, 

superstitions of all kinds, and 2T S. Matt. x. 23. There was 

having little of the Roman feel- the additional reason that Cypri- 

ing for the state religion, should anum ad leonex had become the 

in his times of remorse have cry, and his presence in the city 

turned towards the Church, does exasperated the heathen, 
not seem to me at all improbable. 



278 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bK. HI. 

governed with as much vigor as if he had been there 
in person. 

a?ay faU Of those who remained, not a few denied Christ 
in a variety of ways ; some promptly, 28 some reluc- 
tantly, others under the agony of excruciating tor- 
tures. Some offered sacrifice to idols — sacrificati / 
some burned incense before the image of the Em- 
peror — thurificati ; those who had the means pur- 
chased immunity to themselves in the form of a 
written certificate or discharge, 29 and were called 

Three Ubellatici. Few of either of these classes fell per- 

classes of •*• 

the lapsed, manently from the Faith. Even those who in the 
hour of trial had shown a disgraceful eagerness to 
stand fair with the judges, availed themselves of the 
earliest opportunity to retrace their steps. Their 
prevarication was caused by timidity and weakness ; 
and the great body of them became afterwards fer- 
vid and passionate, but, from the same defects of 
character which had brought about their fall, ex- 
ceedingly troublesome penitents. 
Many On the other hand, it was the policy of 'the mag- 

into istrates to break the spirits of the faithful, rather, 
than to arouse them by the spectacle of actual mar- 
tyrdoms. The prisons, therefore, were crowded with 
Confessors. Some of these displayed the insolence, 
self-conceit and spirit of bravado which are natural 
accompaniments of untutored courage, and by which 
martyrdom, as we have seen, was so frequently dis- 

28 Cyprian complains (de lapsis) request of their own to that effect ; 
that a very large number (maximus or sometimes the request was 
fratrum numerus) fell away at made, and the bribe paid, by 
once. friends of the parties without 

29 Some managed more quietly their knowledge. The Church 
to get their names inserted in the discountenanced all such eva- 
register, as persons who had com- sions. 

plied with the edict, without any 



CH. II.] CARTHAGE AND S. CYPKIAN. 279 

graced. The persecution, in fact, had taken the 
Church at unawares. Few were prepared to suffer 
for the Name of Christ ; and in the few who were 
prepared, enthusiasm in some cases became a substi- 
tute for faith. The tortures inflicted by the heathen, 
therefore, were not the only trial of the more, genu- 
ine Confessors. They had to brace themselves for the 
final conflict amid the strife of tongues, and some- 
times amid scenes of scandalous confusion. 30 The 
prisons were thronged with sympathizing friends. 
Priests and Deacons ministered to the inmates. 
Women kissed their chains. Penitents solicited 
their powerful intervention. Demagogues endeav- 
ored to make tools of them. Flattery and adulation 
enveloped them in a cloud of impenetrable self- scandals, 
delusion. Their Bishop, who watched them from a 
di stance, and who labored under the peculiar disad- 
vantage of appearing to have avoided a conflict to 
which he incited others, had to adapt his exhorta- 
tions to two distinct classes. One class, the most 
forward and influential, he rebuked and chastised. 
To do this, as he did, in the face of a busy faction, 
and against a popular sentiment which regarded the 
Confessor as nearer to God and consequently more 
powerful than the Bishop, required faith and cour- 
age of no ordinary kind. But there was another 
and large class which needed encouragement. High 
spirits and pure faith do not always go together. 
The vivacity of mind, which some of the martyrs Two . 
exhibited to a troublesome extent, it was necessary maJtyrs! 
to awaken and foster in others by every allowable 
expedient. "With rebukes, therefore, he mingled the 

30 Epistol. vi., Pariss. 



280 HISTOKY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. in. 

most eloquent appeals. The more he chastised the 
insolence of the martyrs, the more he exalted the 
dignity of their calling. 31 His own character, the 
meanwhile, he had to leave a prey to the foul 
tongue of calumny and detraction. 

J ) o i, ^ c e tions To the Priests and Deacons who ministered to the 

clergy. Confessors he gave minute directions, 32 urging them 
to prudence and self-restraint. They were to go to 
the prisons, for the administration of the Sacrament, 
one Deacon and one Priest at a time. Xo one 
should go oftener than was absolutely needed. All 
crowding and excitement were to be carefully avoid- 
ed. Nothing was to be tolerated, in short, which 
should draw notice needlessly upon themselves, or 
exasperate the heathen. 

Treatment In the same prudent spirit he addressed himself to 
the case of those who had made themselves amenable 
to the discipline of the Church. A distinction was 
made between the three classes of those who had fall- 

kjjjjffl en. M The libellipacis granted by some of the Marty rs, 
which in popular estimation were equivalent to a 
formal restoration to the privileges of communion, 
were to be accounted as things of nought. The Mar- 
tyrs had no right to bestow such pardons. The lapsed 
of every sort, therefore, were to be shut off from the 
Table of the Lord, till they could plead their cause 

31 His first letter to the Confes- logesis — a public confession, with 
sors is entirely of this character, tears, fastings, etc., of greater or 
It is, perhaps, enthusiastic in its less duration, according to the na- 
language ; but a leader encourag- ture of the offence. It was proba- 
ing timid soldiers on the field of bly about the times of Decius, that 
battle cannot afford to pick words, the distinction of flentes, audien- 
EpiMol. fxxx., Pariss. tea, genuftcctente* and conaistentes 

32 Epistol. iv., Pariss. grew up. See Bingham's Auti- 

33 Sins after Baptism were atoned quitics, Book xviii. c. 1. 
in the early Church by the Exomo- 



of the 
lapsed 



pacis. 



CH. II.] CARTHAGE AND S. CYPRIAN. 281 

before the Clergy and Confessors and the whole body 
of the People. By this conrse Cyprian made many 
enemies to himself. But with equal disregard of 
personal considerations, he showed no favor to that £™ ieSi 
stricter party, not numerons, perhaps, but fanatical 
and highly influential, who were disposed to treat the 
lapsed as apostates from the Faith, leaving no door 
open for reconciliation, The Laity, in such cases, 
were as a general rule less tolerant than the Clergy. 34 
Cyprian in some instances had not only to plead with 
them for mercy, but " to extort" mercy from them. 
Indeed, he was not a little censured for his facility in 
restoring men to communion whose professions of 
penitence were open to suspicion. But in all such 
points he was equal to his work. Much as he mag- 
nified the* Church, and firmly as he believed that to 
be separate from the Church was to be separate from 
Christ, he was equally well assured that no peace 
with the 'Church would stand which was not sanc- 
tioned by the Gospel. It is the Lord alone who par- J^ rch 
dons ; the Lord who is to be appeased. Man can act, *°* ^ 
in such matters, but as the instrument of the Lord. 
Any judgment, therefore, or any absolution apart 
from the Lord's revealed will, is necessarily good for 
nothing. 35 

These counsels and exhortations were not in all in- Arrogance 

of the 

stances equally successful. One Lucian a Confessor martyrs, 
addressed a letter to "Pope Cyprian," and through him 
to all Bishops, declaring that those in prison had given 
a full pardon to the lapsed, and requiring him and the 
Clergy generally to respect their decision ; otherwise, 
it was plainly intimated, they would fall under the dis- 

34 S. Cypr. Ep. lav. 17. Pariss. 35 S. Cyprian. Be Lapsis., 16, Vj. 



282 HISTOKY OF THE CHUECH. [BK. III. 

pleasure of the holy Martyrs. This seems sufficiently 
absurd. Its absurdity, however, did not make it the 
less dangerous to the peace of the Church. It was 
the beginning of troubles which continued long after 
the Martyrs themselves had gone peaceably to their 
rest. For most of these men, both in Africa, and in 
Home where their conduct had been equally objec- 
tionable, were brought at length to a more Christian 
frame of mind. Their long and cruel sufferings- 
many of them being slowly starved to death in prison 
— proved a means of grace to them. From a letter 
of the stout-hearted Lucian, written eight days after 
this punishment had begun, we learn that sixteen had 

edifying died, and others were quietly awaiting their end. It 
appears from the same epistle, that while he still felt 
it his duty to give peace to those who applied, the gift 
was coupled with the condition that the recipients 
should plead their cause and make confession before 
the Bishop. A letter from Caldonius, another Con- 
fessor, states still more clearly the necessity of com- 
pliance with this reasonable condition. 36 

Noyatus j^t the real root of the mischief was among that 

and his o 

party. party of Presbyters in Carthage, who had so strenu- 
ously opposed S. Cyprian's election. Of these the 
chief leader was one Novatus, 37 a Presbyter in bad 
odor, who just before the persecution had been ac- 
cused of shocking crimes, and who consequently 
looked forward to peace and the restoration of Cy- 

30 S. Cyprian. Op. Fpist. xvi.- acteristic, however, of times of 

xxi. Pariss. great religious fervor, that the 

37 The moral character of this good are very good, and the had 

man is painted by S. Cyprian in are very had. Medium charac- 

the blackest colors ; so much so, ters do not flourish at such pe- 

that many have questioned the riods. Epistol. xlviii., Pariss. 
truth of the portrait. It is char- 



CH. II.] CARTHAGE AND S. CYPRIAN. 283 

prian with no particular favor. "With bim were as- 
sociated the great body of the lapsed; many of 
whom were persons of wealth and consequence. 
Felicissimus, a factious layman, whom in some way Feiiciss- 
or other he got to be made Deacon, was his most 
able coadjutor. By the intrigues of these men, the 
Carthaginian Church community were thrown into 
confusion. The prospect of Cyprian's return to the 
city inspired a* general panic. When the Presbyters 
who remained faithful to their Bishop endeavored in 
compliance with his instructions to carry out the 
laws, the result was a rebellion. Felicissimus and soMsm in 

> ^ Carthage. 

his party openly organized, and, proceeding from 
one wickedness to another, at length put Cyprian 
and his adherents under a ban of excommunication. 

By such acts, however, they lost their hold upon ^-con- 
that numerous party of the lapsed, who had acted 
with them more from dislike of discipline than from 
any hearty belief in the goodness of their cause. 
Cyprian promptly availed himself of the blunder 
they had committed. He declared them excommu- 
nicated, not by any act of his, but by their own vol- 
untary secession. It was no longer possible, then, 
to choose between two parties in the Church. Men 
must cast in their lot with one or other of two sepa- 
rate communions. Under these circumstances many 
returned to the bosom of the Church. The rest hav- 
ing procured the ordination of Fortunatus, one of 
the five Presbyters, as their Bishop, sent Felicissimus Goes to 

t» i • • Rome. 

over to Koine ; where the dominant party, being 
long ago committed to the cause of an indulgent 
discipline, and being harassed at that period by the 
austere faction of l^ovatiaiius, might naturally be 
expected to receive them with some favor. At all 



284 HISTORY OF THE CHUBCH. L BK - m - 

events, Felicissimus was not sparing of threats, as 
Cornelius we ll as protestations. And Cornelius, the Roman 

wavers. -•■ ' 

Bishop, was not very decided. 38 He was, perhaps, 
unwilling to drive so influential a body as these 
African schismatics into the already powerful ranks 
of the opposition party in Rome. He hesitated for 
some time. But Cyprian was armed for all emer- 
gencies. Sounding one of his vigorous trumpet- 
blasts 3S into the ears of the wavering* Roman Coun- 
cil, he brought them at length to a satisfactory 
decision. Felicissimus was rejected, and had thence- 
forward to look for countenance elsewhere. 

Novatian- Eovatus in like manner betook himself to Rome. 
There he fell in with the more famous Novatianus : 
a man of learning -and orthodoxy, but of question- 
able morals, who, at the head of a faction consisting 
mainly of Confessors, had been a rival candidate to 
Cornelius for the episcopal chair ; but failing of the 
election, had managed to procure consecration in a 
surreptitious way. 40 This man stood on a higher and 
stronger platform than the Carthaginian leaders. 

puritan Hi s object, as he contended, was the purity of the 

scheme. J 7 7 -n 

Church. He would keep her free from all contami- 
nation. Those who had fallen, therefore, in times of 
persecution, or those who had been guilty of any 

38 Ephtol. liv. 2. of the smaller Sees were not al- 

39 Cyp. JEJpistol. liv. Pariss. ways sliming lights. The roe- 

40 It is said, that he invited tropolitan system, therefore, and 
three Bishops to his house, feast- the practice of consecrating Bi sh- 
ed, flattered, made them drunk, ops, and sometimes Presbyters, 
and so procured consecration. In only in Council, was a necessary 
this case, as in those of Felicis- safeguard. In the case of Fort u- 
simus and Fortunatus, the mmier- natus, the consecration seems to 
osity of the Episcopate had an have been performed by Priva- 
attendant evil, that ordination tus, an excommunicated Bishop, 
could sometimes be had in viola- JEpistol. liv. 11. 

tion of the canons. The Bishops 



CH. II.] CARTHAGE AND S. CYPRIAN. 285 

capital sin, were to remain suspended from commu- 
nion till restored by Christ Himself at the Day of 
final Judgment. "With these views ]STovatus ac- 
corded more readily than might have been expected 
from his previous career. He had doubtless learned Two 
by this time, from his experience as a party-leader, 
that discipline is as necessary to keep men out of the 
Church, as to keep them in. He readily cooperated 
with Novatianus, therefore, in the erection of a new 
and severe system of ecclesiastical communion. 

The Sect was soon abandoned, to the great joy of and Rome 
the faithful both in Kome and Carthage, by most of Cartha g e - 
the Confessors ; Cyprian, by his zealous but charita- 
ble letters to these misguided men, having done much 
to dispel their delusion. 41 It gained recruits, however, 
in other parts of the world. Declaring open war 
upon Cyprian and Cornelius, and spreading calum- 
nies against them in all directions, the leaders plied 
briskly between Italy and North Africa, and in the 
latter country especially made a permanent lodgment. 
One Maximus seems to have acted as their Bishop in 
Carthage. But of him, as of Fortunatus, little beyond 
the name is known. 

Like l\Iontanism, from the lees of which heresy it In other 

' *> places. 

drew much of its sourness and strength, Eovatianism 
had not a little in common with Catholic Christianity. 
The Puritan severity, which was its chief point of dif- 
ference, could plead the sanction of high names in the 
Church, and was popular with a large party of ortho- 
dox believers, especially in Borne. It was one of the 
points, in fact, in which philosophy and religion were 
at variance. That all sins are equal, and that a grave 

41 The letters of Cyprian, Corne- in Cyprian's works. Epistol. xl. 
lius and the Confessors are found e't ss. Pariss. 



286 HISTOEY OF THE CHURCH. [BK. IH. 

man ought to he immovable™ were Stoic maxims winch 
liad greater weiglit with, such men as Tatian, Hip- 
polytus and Novatian than the evangelic precepts of 
Nature mercy and forgiveness. In spite of the taint of scm'sm, 
schism, therefore, the followers of this Sect were numerous and 
respectable, both in the East and West ; and there is 
reason to believe that, partly by virtue of rigorous 
discipline, partly by the close watch which a small 
society can keep upon its members, and still more 
from the reformatory influence of new scenes, new 
associations, and a newly awakened sense of responsi- 
bility, they continued for some time an orderly, se- 
date and highly influential body. 43 Their creed was 
orthodox, except on the point of absolution. They 
indulged, however, an intensely bitter feeling against 
the Church. They regarded her as a synagogue of 
Jezebels, Balaams and Iscariots ; and when they made 
proselytes from the " apostate" communion, they in 
all cases caused them to be rebaptized. 
Discipline On the other hand, the secession of so many trouble- 
some men, with the lull of persecution which followed 
the death of Decius, gave Cyprian and his worthy col- 
league, Cornelius of Rome, an opportunity to gain 
ground in the restoration of Church discipline. Some 
of the lapsed were reconciled fully to the Church. 
Others were put on penance. Indulgence was pro- 
vided for particular emergencies. 44 Numerous Coun- 
cils were held ; and as disorders similar to those of 

42 S. Cypr. Epistol. lv. 13.*— an Council of Nice. See Socrates, 
admirable expose of the fallacies Eccles. Hist. i. 10 ; v. 10. Nova- 
of this harsh philosophy. tian's Liber de Trinitate is to be 

43 Novatian stands high among found in Tertulliav? s Work?-, Nie. 
orthodox writers. Acesius, a No- Riqalt. 1689. 
vatian Bishop, was among those 44 So long as the discipline of 
summoned by Constantine to the the Church remained a real thing, 



Bitter 
feeling. 



A. D. 

251-253 



CH. m.] DECIAN TIMES. 287 

Rome and Carthage were more or less prevalent in 
other portions of the Church, a discipline sufficiently 
uniform in its character was everywhere matured, 
systematized, and gradually established. 



CHAPTER III. 

DECIAN TIMES. 



The Decian persecution, with the innumerable ca- a grpat 
lamities that followed, extending as it did into all 
parts of the Roman Empire, was a time of no ordinary 
terror : it was eminently an epoch in Church History, 
a crisis, a day of judgment; a season of such universal 
sifting and probation as Christians had not known in 
any other period of their varied and calamitous expe- 
rience. 

It has been mentioned incidentally in the preceding warnings, 
chapter of this Book, that the approach of persecution 
had been heralded by mysterious«forebodings or pre- 
sentiments upon the souls of men. In one of the 
many visions thus occurring, 1 "long before the arri- 

indulgences, — such as remission or Church the term meant simply ad- 

shortening of the time of public mission to communion (of those who 

penance, — were indispensable. In seemed truly penitent) before the 

later times discipline became a term of suspension from communion 

nullity; and indulgences, being no had canonical!,}/ expired. Thepow- 

longer applicable to their original er of remission was with the Bish- 

use,were transferred to such things op and Presbyters ; but in the Af- 

as absolving men from vows hasti- rican Church, and more or less in 

lyassumed;orbyamostmonstrous the Church generally, the people 

abuse; to the release of souls from were allowed a voice in the matter, 
purgatorial pains. In the early l S. Cypr. Epistol. vii. Pariss. 



288 HISTOEY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. III. 

val of the desolating storm," there was a voice from 
Heaven commanding the people to pray ; but when 
the j began to ntter their petitions, their voices j angled 
and their hearts were ont of tnne, and no true prayer 
arose because there was no harmony. In another 
Dreams. d re am, a venerable Householder was seen sitting, with 
a young man on his right hand and another on his left. 
The one on the right sat grave and pensive, and not 
without a shade of sorrowful indignation. The other 
on the left was triumphant and exultant ; and held in 
his hand a net, which with a wanton and wicked leer 
he threatened continually to cast over the heads of the 
bystanders. Dreams of this kind were but echoes of 
waking thoughts, and belonged to healthy minds like 
that of S. Cyprian. They sprang from a deep convic- 
tion of some judgment needed ; they pointed to noth- 
Thecom- ing more than some judgment coming. But when 
the Lord, the expected crisis had actually arrived, the terrors 
of the times naturally hurried the mind forward from 
particular passing judgments to that great and anti- 
typal judgment which is to be the end of all. The 
nearness of the Lord's coming was at all times vividly 
realized by the faith of the early Church. The very 
posture of their worship, as they stood with head erect, 
arms outstretched, and eyes eagerly looking forward, 
was a constant reminder to them of this awful expec- 
tation. 2 But in times of such complicated horrors as 
those under Decius and his successors, "when the 
S| ns in Yer J M ar ty rs scandalized the Church ; when even 
church, Confession in some cases was but a swelling, irrever- 
ential and insolent bravado ; when torments in other 
cases were torments without end, without issue, with- 

2 See the figures of " praying men and women," in Perret, Gate- 
combes de Rome, etc. 



CH. m.] DECIAN TIMES. 289 

out solace — torments which kept the crown at a tan- 
talizing distance, making the heart sick while they 
excruciated the body, so that if any one escaped and 
reaped the reward of glory, it was not by termination 
of the torture, but by mere alacrity in dying ;" 3 when, 
in the civil world, " every instant of time was marked, in the 
every province of the Roman world was afflicted, by 
barbarous invaders and military tyrants, and the ru- 
ined empire seemed to approach the last and fatal mo- 
ment of its dissolution ;" when, in the natural world, 
" there were inundations, earthquakes, preternatural in the 
darkness, with a long and general famine, and a furious world. - 
plague, depopulating whole towns, and consuming ac- 
cording to a moderate calculation the moiety of the 
human species :' H at such periods it is not wonderful 
that the common fear or hope, whichever it might be, 
became occasionally an enthusiastic and perhaps dan- 
gerous delusion. 

Yet, even in the worst cases, this confident expec- 
tation of the end was far less irrational than has ^l rl 7 . 

Christian 

sometimes been pretended. A mere fatalist may 7 ie TI! „ 

x ' justified. 

sneer at such a faith. 5 It may awaken the smiles of 
those who suppose the world to be governed only 
by mathematically fixed laws. But the early Chris- 
tian conceived of no such mechanism of fate. He 
had faith in a living God. He believed in One who 
hears and answers prayer. But if the supreme 
Governor and Controller really answers prayer, it 
follows that the duration of human life, the vicissi- 

3 S. Cypr. Epistol. vii. Pariss. belief was founded. The proin- 

4 Gibbon's Decline andFall, etc. ise*was uttered, however, not to 
vol. i. ch. x. inform men of the time when 

5 Gibbon sneers impartially at judgment should come, but that 
the common belief of the Church, they might be always on the look- 
and at the promise, on which that out for that time. S. Matt. xxv. 13. 

13 • 



290 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bK. in. 

tudes of empire, the existence of the world, the 
chances and changes of all earthly things, are in 
the strictest sense of the word precarious or contin- 
gent: the shadow of final doom may be brought 
backward or carried forward on the dial-plate of 
time, with a freedom as absolute, as to a mere fatal- 
ist philosophy it is inconceivable and impossible. 
Jonah was a true prophet, though Nineveh's forty 
days passed without witnessing its fall. 
The judge Xhe early Christian, indeed, did not theorize as vet 

always J j «/ 

near. upon this momentous subject. He believed, as the 
Scriptures taught him, in a Saviour and a Judge al- 
ways near at hand. He was on the look-out for a 
Judgment surely coming, ever impending, yet capa- 
ble of suspension or even of protracted and indefi- 
nite delay. The consequence was that with each 
successive appearance of the portents of that Judg- 
ment he lifted up his head ; with a mixt feeling, like 
that of S. Paul when he was in a strait betwixt two 
wishes, 6 he partly hoped and prayed for it, yet, as 
taught by the Church in her petitions pro mora 
Jmis, did his utmost by prayer and penitence to 
stay or to avert it ; and so, when the " signs" seem- 
seeming ed to fail, when a lesser crisis passed without mani- 
the signs festing the great and consummating Judgment, he 
ment. 8 was in no way disappointed, nor was his faith at all 
shaken. A man, who having never seen the sun- 
shine yet confidently expects it, might reasonably 
mistake the dawn for the complete and perfect day. 
One who has never witnessed death, might anticipate 
its approach in each jnomentary swoon. On the 
same principle, the believer of early times was not 

6 Philipp. i. 23, 24. 



CH. III.] DECIAN TIMES. 291 

irrational in looking upon each, successive trial as a 
fulfilment of Prophecy ; he was only mistaken as to 
the finality of that fulfilment. He acted merely on 
that principle of common sense, by which knowing 
the end to be certain somewhere, yet not knowing 
where, we look for it as confidently at the turn of a 
long lane, as at its actual termination. 

To this it may be added, that the early Christian Numbers 
did not base his hope or fear upon arithmetical cal- symbols. 
dilations. He was influenced more oy " the signs 
of the times." 7 As to the numbers of days or 
months or years in the language of Prophecy, he re- 
garded them as symbols of God's time, not rigid de- 
finitions. But it is of the nature of symbols — even, 
it may be said, of mathematical symbols, and there- 
fore much more of spiritual — that they admit within 
their range an almost infinite variety of particular 
applications. 

But to return from this digression : the persecu- ^j™ 1 " 
tion under Decius was common to all the Churches. 
Among its principal Martyrs was Alexander, the 
venerable Bishop of Jerusalem. Having borne his 
testimony at the tribunal, he was tortured and 
thrown into' prison, where he peacefully expired. 
Babylas, 8 Bishop of Antioch, won his crown in like 
manner. Eudsemon, Bishop of Smyrna, lapsed from 
the Faith ; but Pionius, one of his Presbyters, was 
crucified and burnt. In Ephesus, Maximus was one 
of the earliest victims. In all places, many fled into 
the rural districts, or took refuge in caves and soli- 

7 Diem ultimum et occultum, pramotaturn. Tertul. de -Res. Car- 

nec ulli prceter Patri notam, et ta- nis, 22. Philastr. de Hares, cvii. 
men signis atq ue portentis,et con- 8 Cave's Lives of the Fathers, 

cussionibus elementorum .... vol. i. 



292 HISTOEY OF THE CHUECH. [BK. III. 

The seven tary wilds. Anions these were seven youths of 

Sleepers. d ~ " 

Ephesus, whose bodies, found many years after in a 
cavern, gave rise to the celebrated legend of the 
Seven Sleepers. 
Gregory S. Gregory, the renowned Bishop of Neo-Csesarea 
wonder in Pontus, surnamed Thaumaturgns for his wonder- 
ful works, was admonished by a vision to decline 
the persecution, and retired with the majority of his 
flock into a wilderness. He was a disciple of Origen, 
in whose school at Csesarea he studied for five years, 
and for whom he ever afterwards retained the pro- 
foundest veneration. The miracles related of him 
were committed to writing about a century after his 
decease by Gregory of Nyssa, and seem to have 
been collected chiefly from the memory of the aged 
grandmother of the latter. 9 The tradition of them, 
therefore, had abundance of time to grow. His 
His presence, it is said, dispossessed a heathen shrine of 

miracles. ■*- x 

the daemon that held it ; he stayed by his prayers a 
pestilence that broke out among the people of Nco- 
Csesarea ; he quelled the overflowing of the river 
Lycus ; when he was searched for in the woods, in 
which he and his companions were hidden during 
the persecution, he was miraculously veiled from the 
eyes of the officers. In consequence of these and 
similar wonders, he was called among the Gentiles 
a second Moses. His greatest work, that he found 
but seventeen Christians in his diocese when ap- 
pointed to it, and left but seventeen unconverted 
heathen, rests, it is said, upon his dying testimony. 
Stories of this kind require to be supported by con- 
temporaneous witnesses. That Gregory, however, 

9 He died about the year 210, of the Fathers, vol. i., and Greg-, 
or a little after. See Cave's Lives Nyss. in vii. Greg. Thaum. 



CH. m.] • DECIAN" TIMES. 293 

was a man of prayer and of extraordinary gifts, His 

*- d " ° m ' success. 

and that a peculiar divine blessing rested upon his 
labors, seems to have been the belief of the whole 
early Church ; a belief the more entitled to credit, 
that, belonging as he did to the school of an excom- 
municated teacher, 10 he was hardly the person that 
would have been selected to make a hero of, unless 
he had had more than a common claim to such dis- 
tinction. After the persecution was over, he caused 
the festivals of the martyrs to be celebrated with in- 
creased solemnity ; and many heathen thereby were 
attracted to the Church. 

In Alexandria, Dionysius the Great, another of Dionysius 
Ori gen's disciples, was snatched from martyrdom by andria. 
the loving officiousness of his friends. His record 
of his escape, and his testimony to the courage and 
cruel sufferings of the martyrs, have been preserved 
in the pages of Eusebius. 11 The persecution, it ap- 
pears, did not begin as elsewhere with the action of 
the Emperor. It was an outbreak of popular fanati- 
cism excited by a man who pretended to be a pro- 
phet, and preceded the imperial edict by about one 
year. It raged with such fury that Alexandria had 
the appearance of a city taken by storm. 

But in Egypt, as elsewhere, innumerable believers Anchorites 
sought safety in retreat. Some fled into the desert ; 
and many of these, among whom the aged Bishop 
of Chersemon and his wife are particularly mention- 
ed, were never heard of more. Some were captured 
by predatory tribes. The greater part perished of 

10 His own-orthodoxy has been using words in the heat of dis- 

impeached ; and is defensible only putation which are not to be 

on the ground that in his con- taken to the letter, 

troversy with iElian he spoke, 1J Euseb. Ecclesiastical History, 

ov Soy/iariKoj^, a/// djov LartKtog ; vi. 40-42. 



294 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [BK. m. 

hunger and exposure. Xte pious feeling that God 
God was everywhere, as near to the believer in solitude 
where. as in the assemblies of the faithful ; that the lack of 
sacraments and priestly ministrations would prove 
no loss, where the living sacrifice of a contrite heart 
and humble spirit was faithfully presented : 12 the 
belief, in short, that in every place there could be a 
true and spiritual worship, led many of these wan- 
derers to persist in their retreat. Thus, while the 
general tendency of the Church was towards the 
ideal of social or corporate religion, there sprang up 
a strong propulsion towards the opposite extreme. 
The principle of individualism was mightily assert- 
ed. Paulus, a youth of twenty-three years of age, 
afterwards known as " prince of the anchorites," 
solitary found solitude so refreshing that he remained a con- 
tented dweller in the wilderness to the venerable age 
of one hundred and thirteen years. This impulse to 
hermit-life was the beginning of a great and living 
movement. Involving maxims remarkably at va- 
riance with what have been called the hierarchical 
tendencies of that day, it is wonderful that Church 
rulers regarded it with so much favor as they did. 
It shows a liberality, on their part, and a breadth 
and facility of charitable construction, for which in 
modern times they have received hardly sufficient 
credit. 13 
Military In Asia Proper, Lycia, Pamphylia, Bithynia, Cap- 
padocia, Crete, Cyprus, Gaul, there were numerous 
victims. The army, also, as was common in perse- 
cutions, presented its quota of illustrious witnesses. 

12 S. Cypr. JEpisfoI. lxxvi. 4. is further treated in chap. 6 of 

13 The subject of this paragraph this Book, towards the end. 



and 

social 

religion 



martyrs. 



CH. m.] DECIAN TIMES. 295 

On one occasion, when a Christian of Alexandria 
stood trembling before the judge and seemed to 
waver in his confession, the soldiers who stood 
around indignantly frowned upon him, 14 and then 
by a sudden impulse ran up to the tribunal and de- 
clared themselves believers. 

As already intimated, the persecution, ceasing for Great 
a while on the death of Decius, was followed by a a. d. 202. 
great and terrible plague. Such pestilences are com- 
mon in ancient history, and so far as their horrors are 
concerned, nothing can be added to the eloquence 
and pathos of contemporary descriptions. But there 
is one feature of such visitations, which none of the 
classic writers seem ever to have witnessed. The 
Heathen were courageous against flesh and blood. 
Against the ghostly presence of the pestilence that 
walketh in darkness they were utterly impotent. ~No 
sense of honor, no ties of blood, no obligations of 
religion could nerve them to their duty. Those smit- 
ten by the destroyer were left uncared for while Panic , 

* d among the 

living, and unburied when dead. The claims of Heathen, 
humanity were forgotten. All who had any place 
to flee to consulted their own safety and fled. Those 
who alone remained were either poverty-stricken 
wretches that could not get away, or fiends in human 
shape who battened upon the common misery, and 
hovered like plague-flies around the couches of the 
dying and the dead. Such was the spectacle that 
heathenism presented. Christianity first taught men 
to struggle manfully and successfully with the invisi- 
ble foe. While the idolaters were scattering in all 
directions in irremediable panic, S. Cyprian in 

14 Euseb. vi. 41. 



296 HISTOEY OF THE CHUECH. [bK. in. 



Christian 
courage. 



Carthage, S. Dionysius in Alexandria, and other holy 
men in many other places, were rallying the faithful to 
a warfare more heroic, and a triumph more truly glo- 
rious, than poet or historian had ever as yet recorded. 
piague in In Alexandria, the heathen, considering the pesti- 
dr£ an " lence more terrific than any other terror and more 
afflictive than any other affliction, an evil beyond all 
hope, 16 resigned themselves to it in uncontrollable dis- 
may. Such panics added of course to the number of 
the victims. The Christians, now disciplined by perse- 
cution, struggled more courageously and in conse- 
quence suffered less. They had learned of late to take 
pleasure in tribulations. As no spot in Egypt had been 
a stranger to their sorrows, so none was left unhal- 
lowed by tokens of the joy of their festival occasions. 
To men thus trained to cheerfulness of spirit, the 
pestilence came, " no less than other events, as a 
school of discipline and probation." It gave them 
an opportunity to become, in a sense not realized 
before, " the off-scourings of all men." Regarding 
care of death in such a cause " as little inferior to martyr- 

the dead 

dom," they paid every possible attention to "the 
bodies of the saints ; they laid them on their bosoms, 
purged their eyes, closed their mouths, composed 
their limbs, prepared them decently for burial, and 
calmly awaited the time when they themselves 
should receive the same kind offices from others." 
Similar charities were extended to the heathen. And 
Evii over- though the latter were disposed at first to attribute 
g ood. wlt the plague to divine anger against the Christians, 
and therefore to renew the persecution, yet in time 
their evil was overcome with good, and the chastened 
Church once more gained favor with her foes. 

15 Euseb. vii. 22. 



CH. III.] DECIAN TIMES. 297 

In Carthage, Cyprian awakened the same spirit by Cyprian's 
trumpet-blasts of no uncertain sound. " The .king- 
dom of God, beloved, is rapidly approaching. Ter- 
ror is everywhere. Lo ! the prison-walls are shaking, 
the floods are rising, the tempes4is descending, the 
world old and weary is nodding to its fall. But as 
the world passes away, the reward of life and glory 
is brought nearer to us. Paradise, once forfeited but 
now recovered, is opening to our view." 16 By such 
like exhortations he enlisted the martyr-spirit, now New phase 
chastened and purified, in a work more charitable martyr, 
and useful, though it was hard to persuade the Afri- 
cans that it was also more glorious, than martyrdom 
itself. He enlarged particularly on their duty to the 
heathen. The persecution had been an excellent 
school of patience. The pestilence could teach them 
a lesson of beneficence and mercy. It was an oppor- 
tunity, in short, to show themselves children of Him 
who maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the 
good, 17 and sendeth rain on the just and on the 
unjust. 

The plague raged everywhere, and everywhere the Wai ; s and 
Christians pursued the same course. The wars, fam- 
ines and disorders which preceded or accompanied 
this calamity appealed in another form to the charity 
of the faithful. The Nirmidian Church, impoverished 
by Barbarian invaders, was unable to redeem its mem- 
bers taken captive. The Carthaginians, though in lit- 
tle better plight, came up generously to their aid; 
and, having made a collection of about one hundred 
thousand sestertia, 18 sent it with a list of the names of 

16 S. Cyprian. De Martalitate. 1S About four thousand dollars ; 

11 Vit. S. Cypr. per Pontium considering, however, the greater 

Diac. c. 9 value of money in those days, it 
13* 



298 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [BK. III. 

the donors, that these might be duly remembered in 
the prayers of the grateful recipients of their bounty. 

charity 11 ^is was d° ne " not as a ma tter of charity, but rather 
of religious obligation :" for a member of Christ taken 
captive was regarded as " God's temple in danger of 
defilement." 19 In other parts of the Empire there were 
similar claims similarly met. The terrible Goths, in 
battling with whom Decius and his army ignomini- 

a. d. 25i. ously perished ; 20 the adventurous Franks, whose rav- 
ages extended from the Rhine to the south of Spain 
and the provinces of Mauritania ; the Alemanni, who 
on the death of Decius flouted their victorious banners 
in the face of the proud mistress of the world ; and 
finally the Persians, who eventually penetrated to An- 
tioch and sacked the cities of Asia Minor : all these 
were making prisoners on every side ; and to redeem 
her share of the captives was a formidable addition to 

SivS.° f tne k nr dens of the Church. On the other hand, the 
light of the Gospel was not lost in the darkness of 
Barbarian invasion. The Christian captives in many 
cases proved to be truly " ambassadors in bonds." 

Gauus, Under Gallus, the successor of Decius, the persecu- 

llkrSn ^ on was rene wec ^ > an ^ a ^ er a res pi te °f three or four 
25^259 ' y ears ? occasioned by his death, it was taken up again 
Ninth per- in a more systematic way and with greater determin- 
ation by the Emperor valerian. 21 In preparation for 
these new trials, Cyprian with the concurrence of his 
Council granted an indulgence to the lapsed, remitting 
what remained of their term of public penance. In 
Rome, Carthage and Antioch, Eovatianism at this 
period was formally condemned. 

was equivalent to a much larger 20 See Gibbon's Decline and Fall, 
sum. chap. x. 

19 S. Cyprian. Epistol. lix. Pariss. ' 21 See chap. 4 of this Book. 



CH. IV.] ROME AND THE WEST. 299 

Cornelius the Roman Bishop suffered martyrdom Cornelius 
under Gallus. About the same time Origen was re- Lucius, 

CJ martyrs. 

leased from the burden of a troubled and laborious 
existence ; a man whose indefatigable industry dur- 
ing life was rivalled only by the wretched tenacity of 
hatred, which in the less charitable ages that came 
after dogged his memory and his name. His suffer- sufferings 

00 " of Origen. 

ings in the Decian times were of the most fearful de- 
scription. For many days, in the deepest recesses of 
a prison, his diminutive and spare frame was stretched 
to the distance of four holes on the rack, 22 while the 
boon of dying for the Faith was cruelly denied him. 
He bore up nobly against all the efforts to subdue his 
spirit ; but not long after his release he sank under 
the injuries he had received in prison. Lucius, the 
successor of Cornelius, was another martyr of this pe- 
riod. After a month's vacancy of his See, Stephen, a ste P h |°. 
true Roman in policy and in birth, was elected into 
his place. 



CHAPTER IV, 

ROME AND THE WEST. 



The Roman Church, first planted, it is probable, gS n of 
by some of the Pentecostal converts, but watered by Church - 
the doctrine and blood of S. Peter 1 and S. Paul, had 

22 Euseb. vi. 39 ; Huettii Ori- ry size. Origen' s being stretched, 

geniana, lib. i. cap. iv. Origen therefore, only to the fourth is a 

speaks of his own body as cor- proof of his diminutive stature. 

pusculum, — ~b cufiu-Lov. The x According to Lactantius, S. 

fifth hole on the rack was the Peter came to Rome during the 

measurement of a man of ordina- reign of Nero, twenty-five years 



300 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [BK. III. 

• 

already at the beginning of the second century ac- 
quired a fame proportioned to the dignity of the place 
of its pilgrimage. 2 To S. Ignatius it was venerable as 
" presiding in the seat of the Romans." A more solid 
title to his respect was its forwardness in the grace of 
charity ; 3 of which evangelic virtue the fraternal epis- 
tle, written in its name by S. Clement to the disorderly 
Corinthians, was an early and well-known example. 

Bishops ^ ne or der of succession of its first Bishops, Linus, 
Cletus and Clemens, has been much disputed. 4 It is 
generally conceded that Clement was one of the three, 
and died in exile somewhere about the end of the first 
century. 

Eminent Through the second century the Church continued to 

position. • o ^ t/ 

increase, though chiefly among the Hellenic part of the 
population. 5 Its position, however, in the great queen 
city of the world gave it potiorem jprincipalitatemf 

after the Ascension, or a. d. 58 : a would he have lacked suitable lan- 
much more probable account than guage in which to express it. See 
the story of his journey thither Patr. Apostol. Oxon. 1838. 
just after the conversion of Cor- 4 Pearson. Op. Posthum a: Gies. 
nelius. Sec Lactant. de Mort. Per- § 34, n. 10. The order of succes- 
ses., with note of Baluz. sion here given has the authority 

? 'H enK?i?]oia tov Qeov r/ rragoL- of Irenseus apud Euseb. EccUs. 

Kovaa Tujui/v — quae Romee pere- Hint. v. 6. Observe, that while 

grinatur — was the usual title. the ancients universally ascribe 

3 S. Ignat. Ep. ad Rowan. The the foundation of the Episcopate 

phrase, TipoKodrj/uvtj rP/C uydirnc, of Rome to S. Peter and S. Paid, 

is translated by some " presiding Linus is usually spoken of as the 

over the Agape," i. e., as Dollinger first Bishop proper. See Euseb. 

renders it, " the covenant of love" iv. 1; Barrow on the Supremacy, 

— namely, " the whole Church." supp. 3, 4, etc. 

The context is against any such 5 Milman's Latin Christianity. 

rendering. It may be here ob- 6 This and similar expressions 

served, that in the opening of his are satisfactorily explained in 

Epistles to the Romans and to the Gieseler, § 51, n. 10, etc. See 

Ephesians, S. Ignatius stretches also two excellent notes on the 

language to the utmost for terms subject in the Oxford Translation 

of praise. If, therefore, Rome had of tertullian.: vol. i. p. 470; also, 

possessed any such supremacy as Forbesii Jnstrnctiones Hhtorico- 

modern Rome contends for, Igna- theologkte : op. torn. ii. lib. xv. xvi. 
tius would not have omitted it, nor 



CH. TV.] ROME AND THE WEST. 301 

as S. Ir en sens expressed it ; enabling it to take the 
lead in all matters in which a leader was required, 
and making it a centre of traditions from every quar- 
ter, — a raUying-point to the Gentile, as Jerusalem for 
a while had been to the Jewish Christians. It was clis- JJ^JJl 
tinguished for missionary zeal, and for readiness to 
give assistance to feebler Churches. 7 One fruit of this 
we have seen in that vigorous scion, the Church of , 
Africa Proconsularis : a Church more intensely Latin, 
and destined to exert a greater influence upon the in- 
tellectual tone of Latin Christianity, than the great 
mother See itself. Hence, to Africa, Rome was what Relation 
Corinth was to Achaia, or Ephesus to Asia, auctori- Carthage. 
tatas prcesto : the most accessible living witness to 
apostolic tradition. In the eyes of Tertullian and S. 
Cyprian, it was a starting-point of the unity of the 
priesthood : 8 a far-spreading root of Catholic Eeligion. 

Victor, an African by birth though probably of Attempt 
Roman parentage, was the first who showed a dispo- a. d. 196.' 
sition to pervert this honorable influence into an en- 
croachment upon the freedom of other Churches. He 

7 Euseb. iv. 23. De Marca {de Concord. Sacerdot. et 
e la the interpretation of the Imper. vii. 1) abundantly proves 
language of these African fathers, the following proposition : " The 
a mistake is sometimes made by ancient Church appointed Bishops 
inserting the definite article when over the chief cities of every re- 
the context and general sense gion. The supreme power was 
require the indefinite. Rome, or given to the Metropolitan in Coun- 
Jerusalem, or any other apostolic cil with his brother Bishops. There- 
Church could be called matrix fore the ecclesiastical decisions of 
lonis caiholicce, etc. ; that is, each province were of supreme au- 
a source, a root. For the claims thority and could not be appealed 
of Jerusalem, see G-ieseler, § 94, from." This opinion is combat- 
n. 40, 41. In the ratio pro ed, but to very little purpose, by 
bun in the Apostol. Constitu- Schelstrate (Eccles. Afric. mb Pri- 
tions, the Bishop of Jerusalem is mat., etc.). For the question of 
prayed for first, then the Bishops the Roman Patriarchate see Pal- 
of Rome and Antioch. As to the mevon the Church, Part vii. ch. vii. ; 
authority of Rome in the West, Bingham's Antiquities,, ix. v. 1. 



Resort of 
heretics. 



Marcion 
and 

others. 



302 HISTORY OF THE CHUECH. [bk. m. 

was rebuked, however, by S. Irengeus, and the paschal 
question, 9 in which he interfered, remained unsettled 
till finally disposed of by the general Council of Mcsea. 
But Rome was not merely a centre ; it was, as 
Tacitus implies, a sewer of the world ; and falsehood 
and corruption floated thither as readily as truth, 

Simon, Simon Magus, it is said, obtained his chief tri- 

umphs there, and was there defeated by S. Peter. 
Marcion, Yalentinus and other Gnostic leaders 
found a hearing there. At a somewhat later period, 
Montanus and the new prophets gained an influence 
for a while over Victor himself ; and thence spread 
their doctrine, rife with the seeds of schism, through 
all the Churches of the West. The reaction against 
Montanism filled the city with another swarm of 

Praxeas heretics. Praxeas, Theodotus, Artemon, the disci- 
ples of ISToetus, .Sabellius and the obscure Judaizing 
faction which hatched the famous Clementina™ had 
each their day of prosperity in Rome; and, if we 
are to credit the statements of Hippolytus, the taint 
of heresy and evil living struck deep into the char- 
acters of the Bishops Zephyrinus and Callistus. 

nus h A*D Zephyrinus, it is said, 11 was ignorant of sacred 
learning — totally illiterate, in fact ; and therefore 
surrendered himself to the guidance of the cunning 
flatterer Callistus. This latter had been a slave ; 
then a species of banker, doing business largely on 
the credit of an indulgent master ; then a defaulter ; 

9 Book ii. ch. 9. the facta of the case, there is 

i0 See Gies. § 58; and Book ii. probably some exaggeration. See 

ch. V of this History. Bunsen's Hippolytus; Chr. Words- 

11 I merely abridge the lively worth's Church of Rome in the 

narrative of Hippolytus: Refut. Third Century, with, reference to 

Omn. Hceres. ix. 12; an account Hippolytus; and Dollinger, Hip- 

val uable for the insight it gives polytus u. Kallistus. 
into the state of parties. As to 



others. 



nus, A. D 

203 



M. IV.] HOME AInD THE WEST. 303 

and finally a volunteer for martyrdom, having ptit 
himself in this way of restoring his broken credit 
by disturbing public worship in a Jewish Synagogue 
on the Sabbath. For this last offence he was scourg- 
ed by order of the Prefect of the City, and banished 
to the Sardinian mines. Afterwards Marcia, the Kindness 

_ „ .. - , 7 of Marcia. 

mistress 01 Commodus, who, as we have seen, was 
favorable to the Church, procured an edict from the 
Emperor for the recall of the Christian exiles ; and 
Callistus, though expressly excepted from the bene- 
fit of the decree, managed in some way or other to 
return with the rest. All this happened during the 
pontificate of Victor. When Zephyrinus succeeded 
to the episcopal chair, he saw in Callistus a useful 
coadjutor in the work of " oppressing the Clergy ;" 
put him in charge of the Cemetery, a post of no 
little honor ; and made him his adviser and confi- 
dential friend. Under his guidance, the Bishop, it Dissimuia- 
• tt t -iii .... .-, , v tion of the 

is said, played a double part. While he seemed to Bishop. 

lend an ear to the admonitions of Hippolytus and 
the orthodox side, he secretly favored the followers 
of the heretic Ebetus. But on tnis latter point there 
was no little difference of opinion among the Bo- 
mans. Hippolytus and his friends not only failed to 
persuade others that their Bishop was a heretic and 
a dissembler, but soon found themselves in a hope- 
less minority, under the nickname of Ditheists 12 or Ditheists. 
believers in two Gods. 

Callistus succeeded Zephyrinus, and Hippolytus caiiistus, 
was placed in a still more uncomfortable position. 
Sabellius, indeed, was excommunicated ; — a kind of 
peace-offering, it was thought, to the austere Bishop 

12 He taught, in other words, maintaining' His Personality, made 
the Divinity of the Son; but, in Him subordinate to the Father. 



304 HISTOEY OF THE CHUECH. [bK. m. 

sabeiiius f p or to. But Callistus soon showed a leaning to 

demned. some other shade of the Patripassian heresy. To 

this he added lax views of discipline, with novel and 

high assumptions of sacerdotal power. There was 

no sin, he said, that he had not power to remit. 

Laxity N t even for mortal sins could a Bishop be deposed 

imputed. t \ J- 

from his office. ISTot only might married men, but 
even the twice or thrice married, be admitted to holy 
orders ; and those already in orders might marry 
without sin. When Hippolytus remonstrated against 
all this, he received only the sharp answer of the 
j^tmed Apostle, " Who art thou that judgest another man's 
listus. servant?" Or, if that did not suffice him, he was 
reminded of " the wheat and tares which grow up 
together until the harvest ;" or of " the net that 
draws in fish both bad and good ;" or of " the Ark 
in which clean and unclean took refuge together ;" 
or, in short, of " many other things which Callistus 
interpreted in like manner." 
H o S >uia7 s The consequence was, according to Hippolytus, 
that people were quite bewitched with " the sorcerer" 
Callistus ; and, though secret crimes and incredible 
immoralities 13 were supposed to be encouraged by 
him, yet " many clung to him from a conviction that 
affairs were in the main well managed." Having 
only one side of the story, and that from a witness 
boiling over with personal and theological resent- 
ment, we are not in a position to judge, at the pres<- 
ent day, how far they were mistaken in this con- 
clusion. 



13 He is said to have connived charge which shows, at least, 

at concubinage with slaves, child- what sort of scandals could be 

murder, and the like, on the part circulated and believed.' 
of wealthy Eoman ladies : a 



CH. IV.] ROME AND THE WEST. 305 

The truth would seem to be, both from the testi- Rome a 
mony of Hippolytus and from Tertullian's 14 angry ground, 
invectives, that Eome at that period was a great 
battle-ground of conflicting principles. Two ele- 
ments, especially, contended for the mastery there, t™ 
The Greek spirit, versatile, subtle, keen in doctrinal e emen 
disputation, and somewhat impracticable, found its 
meet exponent in Hippolytus and his party. Against 
this, the Latin spirit, the genius loci, more practical, 
more politic, and in the nicer points of divinity more 
ready to temporize, was beginning to make head. 
As this latter temper prevailed, the result was a sort 
of Fabian policy in the polemics of the day : a slow- Fabian 
ness of decision, and perhaps of apprehension, 15 with poUcy ' 
regard to conflicting theories, which gave Eome in 
the long run a practical advantage. The more 
impetuous Greeks might chafe at the- temporary 
favor shown to Marcion, that " first-born of the 
devil" as he was called by S. Polycarp ; or to 
Montanus, Praxeas, ISToetus, and other innovators : 
but this very chafing enhanced the value of the 
decision when at length it came, and caused it to be 
received with more heart-felt satisfaction. 

In questions of discipline, the same practical turn Discipline 
of mind disposed the mass of the Eoman Clergy to 
an indulgent course ; and the stricter party, more or 
less imbued with Montanistic or Encratite notions, 
fell into the position of a disappointed faction. The 
vilest sinners, it was complained, might hope for 

n Be Pudkitia, 21, 22 ; which :5 Before Tertullian framed a 

invectives, however, may hare religious language for the West, 

been aimed at the Bishops gen- it was not easy to express in 

erally, and not (as sometimes Latin the nicer points of the 

thought) at Zephyrinus in par- Greek theology, 
ticular. 



306 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. III. 

Question " the Chnrcli's peace." The treatment of backslid- 

of the day. „ x . 

ers, m tact, was becoming the great question of the 
day. Many of the Bishops, especially in North 
Africa, 16 were disposed to shut the door of forgive- 
ness, at least against adulterers and other scandalous 

Extreme offenders. But Zephyrinus and Callistus offered par- 
don to all. Their facility in this respect, and their 
readiness to admit to communion, seemed hardly to 
fall short of that of the Elxaite sect, — a sort of Ana- 
baptists then flourishing in Borne, 17 who offered a 
new immersion to all who professed repentance, and 
promised in each immersion a plenary absolution of 
by-gone sins. Between the captivating laxity of 
heretics of this kind, and the plausible severity of 
such men as Hippolytus, it was by no means easy to 
steer a just middle course. 

Decian The Decian persecution, and the quarrels about 

epoch. # J- \ J- 

discipline that sprang from it, made an epoch, as we 
have seen, in the history of North Africa : it had an 
equal influence upon the development and the desti- 
nies of the Boman Church. 
Rome and I n both Churches there was a chronic opposition 

Carthage. ,... 

to the ruling party, in Carthage, tins opposition 
maintained a doctrine of almost indiscriminate in- 
dulgence, against the severer views of S. Cyprian. 
In Borne, it appeared, as already stated, under an 
opposite guise. But as the Carthaginian JSTovatus 
and the Boman Novatianus played into each other's 
Cyprian hands, and united on a ground of inexorable severity 
neiius. 01 to the lapsed, so Cyprian and Cornelius stood to- 

16 So. say s S. Cyprian, Epistol. fesaion being made, to admit all 

lv. ad Antonianum ; his own offenders to communion, 

practice, however, was after the 17 See Book II. ch. 7. 
full term of penance, public con* 



CH. IV.] ROME AND THE WEST. 307 

gether on that middle ground of rigor tempered by 
a moderate use of the power of indulgence, which 
became, after many struggles, the general policy of 
the Church. This league between the two great 
leaders of Western Christianity was doubtless bene- 
ficial to them both. The bias towards austerity, 
which Cyprian had inherited from his master Tertul- 
lian, and that towards laxity which characterized the 
clergy of the Roman Church, were moderated to a via media, 
wise and religious mean. 

The accession of Stephen, a period to which we f e P h ^ 
have been conducted by the thread of African 
Church History, interrupted this happy concord 
between the two Churches, and added another to 
the many painful disputes by which Christendom 
was already so scandalously divided. 

It was the question of the validity of baptism Baptism 
administered by heretics. Cyprian took the ground heretics, 
previously maintained by the Council under Agrip- 
pinus, that as the Church alone has authority to bap- 
tize, no true baptism could be given out of the 
Church pale. Stephen commanded that converts 
from all sects should be received, as the sects received 
from one another, by penance only, with the imposi- 
tion of hands. 18 The Name of Christ, he argued, 

18 Cyprian. JEpist. 73, Pariss. Stephen, Bishop of Eome, who 

" On this question there were accepted all baptism, even of 

three views in the early Church ; heretics, which had been given 

(1) that of the early African in the Name of the Trinity." See 
Church and of Asia Minor, in the a learned note to the Oxford 
time of Firmilian, which rejected translation of Teriullian, vol. i. 
all baptism out of the. Church, p. 280. It has been much dis- 
schismatical as well as heretical ; puted, however, whether Stephen 

(2) that of the Greek Church gen- did not take the position that the 
erally, which accepted schismati- Name of Christ, without any 
cal but rejected heretical bap- mention of the other Persons of 
tism ; (3) that first mentioned by the Trinity, was enough for a 



308 HISTOEY OF THE CHITECH. [bK. III. 

was powerful enough to give validity to any baptism 
in which it was invoked. In addition to this he 
pleaded the authority of custom. It is probable 
enough that the custom of many Churches, and per- 
haps of a majority of them, was such as he alleged. 
But when he proceeded, in the spirit of his predeces- 
vioience sor Victor, to make that custom a universal law, 

of Stephen. ' ' 

neither North Africa nor the East was prepared 
to accede to any such pretensions. Supported 
by Alexandria ; 19 by a letter from Firmilianus, the 
learned Bishop of Cappadocian Ca3sarea, written 
in behalf of many other Eastern prelates ; and by 
the harmonious action of three Councils of Carthage, 
Cyprian's in the last of which eighty-seven Bishops were 

course ^^ 

present : Cyprian made light of the Roman custom, 
and set at nought the excommunications of Stephen. 
Indeed, the latter, on account of his violence, was 
regarded by many as having cut himself off from the 

His prin- unity of the Church. 20 

action. In all this Cyprian was thoroughly consistent. 

While an ardent advocate of episcopal authority, 
and willing to pay a certain deference to the Roman 
See, he always regarded that authority as limited by 
the rights of the People on the one side, and by the 
essential equality of Bishops on the other. In local 
affairs, a Bishop could do nothing without the con- 
currence of the local Church ; in matters of general 
concernment, nothing without the consent of his 

valid baptism. S. Cyprian's Ian- thought by some to have agreed 

gnage seems to say as much : but, with Stephen on the abstract 

on the other hand, the fact that question'; but considered it a mat- 

he does not argue against such an ter in which difference of opinion 

extreme position, is almost fatal ought to be allowed. See Neale's 

to the supposition that Stephen Holy Eastern Church. 

really held it. 20 See Epistle of Firmilianus, 

19 Dionysius of Alexandria is Cyprian. Op. 



CH. IV.] ROME AND THE WEST. u 309 

peers and colleagues. 21 The conduct of Stephen, in 
endeavoring to make the custom jrf one Church a 
law for all, was diametrically opposed to this whole- 
some rule. 

The baptismal controversy, like that concerning ^H s ^ on 
Easter, seems to have remained unsettled till the 5ettied - 
Council of Mccea. It made no schism, however, and 
the violence with which it was conducted speedily 
abated. 

Two other cases, that occurred during the pontifi- J^j^^ 
cate of Stephen, served to bring out more distinctly 
still the mutual relations of the Bishops. 

Martianus Bishop of Aries, a nourishing Church case of 

- 1 - 7 ° Martianus. 

in Southern Gaul, having fallen into Nbvatian errors, 
Faustinus Bishop of Lyons and sundry others in the 
same Province wrote repeatedly both to Cyprian 
and Stephen, soliciting their intervention for the 
relief of the afflicted Church. Moved by their en- 
treaties, Cyprian writes to Stephen on the subject. 22 £tt P e " an ' s 
"It devolves upon us," says he, "to extend both 

counsel and help in such emergencies For this 

very purpose the Bishops, though one in the bonds 
of unity and concord, are a numerous body ; that if 2? one 1 ' 6 
one of our Colleagues should play the wolf and begin Bish °p- 
to scatter the flock, the others may come up to the 
rescue, like faithful shepherds, and gather the Lord's 
sheep into the fold. There is more than one haven 
provided for the storm-tost mariner, . . . more than 

one inn for the traveller waylaid by thieves tJ'the 1 

Where one refuge fails, another, the nearest at hand^ nearest - 

21 The term " Brother" or equally to all Bishops by their 

" Colleague," was the ordinary inferiors in grade, 
style of Bishops in addressing 22 S. Cyprian. Epi.stol. bnri. 

one another. The term " Papa," Pariss. I quote the substance 

" Pope," " Father," was applied only of this letter. 



310 HISTOEY OF THE CHURCH. [bK. in, 

should be promptly opened It behoves thee, 

therefore, brother, well-beloved, to send most ample 
instructions to our brother Bishops in Gaul, . . . 
and to the People of Aries, that Martianus be de- 
posed and another chosen in his stead." In thus 
laying the chief share of the common burden upon 
Stephen, Cyprian was obviously influenced by the 
greater nearness of the latter to the scene of action, 
case of The second case was somewhat different in char- 

Basilides 

and Mar- acter. The Churches of Leon and Astorga in Spain 
had in due form procured the deposition of their 
Bishops, Basilides and Martialis, convicted of apos- 
tasy in the Decian persecution; and two other 
Bishops, Felix and Sabinus, had been appointed in 
their place. But Basilides repaired to Home and 
insinuated himself into the good graces of Stephen. 
The Spaniards, hearing that an effort would be made 

consulted to b rm g about his reinstatement, consulted Cyprian 
and the JSTorth African Church on the course to be 

ms pursued. The answer is in the name of an African 

Synod. 23 It commends the conduct of the Spaniards ; 
shows the deposition of the two Bishops to have been 
in all points righteous and canonical ; reflects ob- 
liquely upon Stephen ; and exhorts the Churches to 
stand firm against any effort to reverse their decision, 
from whatever quarter it might come. "By all 
means let the divine and apostolic custom be ob- 
served, which prevails among us and among almost 

Mode of a ;Q the provinces of the world. If a prelate is to be 

electing J- > i - 

Bisnops. appointed, let the neighboring Bishops of the Pro- 
vince come together in presence of the people over 
whom he is to be ordained, and let the Bishop be 

% 23 Epistol. lxvii. 



CH. IV.] ROME AND THE WEST. 311 

chosen by the people present, 24 who are thoroughly 
acquainted with his life and character. This you 
have done in the ordination of Sabiims our Col- 
league. By the suffrage of the whole brotherhood 
and by the judgment of the Bishops assembled the 
Bishopric was conferred upon him, and hands were 
laid upon him in place of Basilides. Such an ordin- 
ation cannot be disannulled Be not troubled, Election 

therefore, even though some of our Colleagues should annulled, 
despise the discipline of the Church, and make com- 
mon cause with Martialis and Basilides ; . . . . know- 
ing that he who thus acts falls under the divine 
censure expressed in the Psalm, " "When thou sawest 
a thief thou consentedst unto him, and hast been 
partaker with the adulterers." 

In this way Cyprian rebuked the arbitrary spirit Stephen 
of Stephen, as Irenseus had rebuked that of his pre- 
decessor Victor. 

The persecution that soon broke out under the Em- valerian's 
peror Valerian, was aimed especially at the leaders Kon^D. 
of the Church. According to the imperial edict, 
Bishops, Priests and Deacons were to be put to 
death by the sword ; Senators and Knights were to 
lose their dignity and property ; Women of condition 
were to be banished ; and Christians in the service 
of the court were to be sent in chains to labor on 
the public works. 25 The object was to deprive the 
Church of Clergy, and to stop the spread of Chris- 2S*a£t 
tianity among the higher classes. Stephen was l^ok/ -0 ' 
among the first that suffered ; being put to death, it 

24 Or, plebe prcesente — in presence of the people — it may mean ; 
though the context, it seems to me, favors the translation I have 
given. 

25 S. Cyprian. Fpistol. lxxxi. Pariss. 



312 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [BK. III. 

is said, while celebrating the Service in one of the 
crypts of the catacombs. 26 Sixtus, his successor, ob- 
tained the same honor. Thus within a period of 
about eight years, five Roman Bishops were enrolled 

A y D ri 258' amon g tne Martyrs. Cyprian in North Africa, and 
Dionysius in Egypt, were at first banished ; but this 
being found insufficient, the former of these prelates 
was summoned again into the presence of the Pro- 
consul, and was sentenced to death. He answered 
simply and with dignity, " God be thanked." In 
the carrying out of the sentence there was great 
publicity, and much of the pomp and show of a 
state execution. 27 

Dionysms On the restoration of peace, after the disastrous 

of Kome, t g x ' 

A - D - expedition against the Persians in which valerian 
was made prisoner, 28 the stream of Church life flow- 
ed more tranquilly for awhile, if not more healthily. 
In Africa, especially, few names of any note present 
themselves till the close of the century. In Rome, 
the long and prosperous pontificate of Dionysius was 
marked by two events of considerable importance. 
agaTst int The Clergy of Pentapblis in Egypt addressed a 
5? Aiex-" 8 complaint to the Roman Bishop against his famous 
andria. namesake, their own spiritual head, Dionysius of 
Alexandria. In the course of a controversy with 
the Sabellians who had obtained a foothold in that 
region, he had employed arguments and analogies 
which seemed to make the Son inferior in substance 
to the Father. A Council was held at Rome, and 
explanations were called for. 29 The Alexandrian 

26 Pagi, Breviariam PP. R. every indignity by the Persian 

Martyrolog. Roman. king, Valerian was flayed alive. 

2? Pontius, Vit. Cypr. ; Passio 20 Dionysius of Rome was an 

Cyprian. S. Cyprian Epistol. able theologian ; and came nearer, 

lxxvi-lxxxii. perhaps, than any divine of that 

28 After being treated with 



CH. IV.] ROME AND THE WEST. 313 

Bishop satisfactorily cleared himself in an Apology 
of four Books, and the matter was soon dropped. 

Such transactions were a necessary fruit of the B ^° d ps a 
unity of the Episcopate, 30 a practical answer to the ^°^ ie 
question, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes f Bishops 
had not only to watch their several nocks, but to 
keep an eye on oue another. When the conduct, 
therefore, of any particular prelate was impugned, 
the first step would be a reference of the case to 
some distinguished colleague or near neighbor ; and 
if this failed, a Council, as general as possible, would 
have to be assembled. Nothing could be more 
natural than such a mode of proceeding. As it was 
always easy, however, to run to one Bishop, but ex- 
tremely difficult to bring about a concurrent action 
of many, it tended on the whole to the aggrandize- 
ment of the greater Sees ; and especially, of course, 
to that of the See of Rome. 

A second case, under the same pontificate, fore- a second 
shadowed another fruitful source of increase to Ro- 
man prerogative. 

On the condemnation of Paul of Samosata by the 
Council in Antioch, 31 a question arose between the 
faction that still adhered to him and the party of 

age to the exact definitions of the subordinationism (or tritheism) 

Hicene period. See fragments of as held by Hippolytus, had prac- 

his writings in Routh, Reliqu. tically attained to the exact posi- 

Sacr. iii. For the expressions tion of the Mcene period in ad- 

that brought Dionysius of Alex- vance of most Churches. 

andria into trouble, see ch. 6 of 30 We have already seen in- 

this Book. It would seem that stances of such appeals to S. 

the Roman Church, having been Cyprian. Another similar case 

compelled to condemn the ex- will appear in connection with 

tremes of Theodotus on the one Paul of Samosata. For appeals 

hand, and of the Patripassians on to Alexandria, see ISTeale's Holy 

the other, and having also re- E. Church, Book i § 5. 

jected the more subtle error of 31 See. Chap. v. of this Book. 

14 



314 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [BK. III. 

Domnus his successor, as to the possession of Church 

property in that important See. It was referred to 

?o e fhe* ed the Emperor Aurelian. He again committed it for 

ifiho'Js decision to Dionysius and the Italian Bishops. This 

a. i>. 2T2. course, perfectly natural and equitable under all the 

circumstances, was the initiative of a policy, which, 

if Rome had continued to be the sole seat of empire, 

centraiiz- might have anticipated by some centuries the time 

nig ten- ° At/ 

dency. f a great monarchy in the Church, by making the 
Roman Bishop the spiritual counterpart of the Em- 
peror. Providentially the empire became divided as 
soon as it became Christian. Constantinople shared 
with Rome the imperial favor, and the centralizing 
drift was in part at least diverted. 

Greatness j n t ^ e mean t i me5 there was little in the Roman 

chmch. Church of the third century, at least, in point of 
numbers or of external show, to indicate the great- 
ness it was destined ultimately to achieve. 32 After 
two hundred years of daily growth, the Roman 

ChiSfana Bishop could boast a clerical staff of forty-six Pres- 
byters, seven Deacons, seven Subdeacons, forty-two 
Acolyths, and fifty-two Exorcists: and during the 
whole of the third century the number of Presby- 
ters ordained averaged less than two a year. 33 If 

32 S. Cyprian declares, how- of a much larger number of be- 
ever, that the Emperor Decius lievers. But these calculations 
could better brook a competitor involve so many hypotheses, and 
in his throne, than a Bishop in his lead to such extravagant results, 
metropolis: a feeling that arose that I cannot bring myself 
probably from the exaggeration to allow them much weight. 
of hatred, rather than from any The number of Clergy and the 
sense of danger to his power. number of Churches in Rome 

33 See Pagi, Breviarium PP. E. (about forty towards the end of 
who gives the ordinations of each the century) are the most reliable 
reign in about the proportion data. See Maitland's Church in 
mentioned. Calculations made the Catacombs, and Northcote's 
from the vast extent of the Cata- Roman Catacombs. The basis of 
combs have led to the supposition the calculations from the Cata- 



Social 
position. 



CH. IV.] ROME AND THE WEST. 315 

the people, therefore, were to the priests according 
to any modern ratio, their whole number could 
hardly have been more than fifty thousand. This 
was but a small proportion of a population which, 
at a moderate estimate, must have numbered con- 
siderably more than a million. It was found chiefly, 
moreover, among the lower, or perhaps the intelli- 
gent middle, and foreign classes. 34 The Gospel, it is 
true, had been heard within the walls of the palace ; 
it had invaded the philosophic schools ; it had made 
converts of senatorial rank; and in two or three 
cases a fitful gleam of imperial favor had awakened 
expectations not yet to be fulfilled. These, however, 
were as yet but exceptional cases. Heathenism still 
presented to the eye an almost unbroken front. 

To a stranger visiting Rome — gazing with awe Heathen 
upon the magnificence of its palaces, hippodromes, view. ° 
theatres, baths, porticos, and temples ; or mingling 
with the myriads of idolaters of every clime and rite 
who thronged these gorgeous centres of universal • 
concourse, — the existence of Christianity might have 
been for a long time unnoticed, or only noticed as a 
fact of little significance to a philosophic mind. 35 If 

combs is given concisely in Raw- writings which in style and mat- 

linson's Historical Evidences, note ter are far above the range of that 

xxxix. to lecture viii. kind of literature that would suit 

34 Amcrtr/ the mere refuse of the a mere rabble. Such expressions 

earth, a heathen is made to say as " refuse of the earth," etc., 

in the Octavius of Minucius Felix, would be applied by a proud Ro- 

This writer, probably an African man to any foreigner, however 

by birth, is among the most intelligent. S. Paul himself was 

graphic and lively of the Apolo- doubtless so regarded by many, 

gists. He wrote early in the See Milman's Hist, of Christiavi- 

century. That there must have ty, Book ii. ch. ix., and Meander's 

been a fair proportion of intelli- Ch. History. 

gent people among the Christians 35 The silence of eminent hea- 

is proved by the general charac- then writers, on the subject of 

ter of the writings of the period ; Christianity, is made much of by 



316 



HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. 



[bk. in. 



Peculiar 
habits. 



Heathen 
slanders. 



an early riser, indeed, he might have seen a few 
groups of men and women, before the day dawned, 
stealing hurriedly to and fro in some obscure suburb. 
If a curious inquirer, he might have learned from 
some haughty Roman that these Antelucani, " haters 
of the light, 36 haters of the gods, addicted to a skulk- 
ing superstition utterly foreign to Roman habits," 
were distinguished from other strange sects by the 
name of Christians. But if he wished to know more 
of them, he could learn it only from themselves. 
With no temples, no altars of any note, 37 and as was 
commonly reported no God, they celebrated their 
sacra peregrina under an impenetrable veil of mys- 
tery. Some said they met together at night for 
Thyestean repasts ; that they worshipped an ass's 
head ; that they practised the most abominable ob- 
scenities. Others affirmed, on the contrary, that 
with the exception of their strange, unsocial, and 
unpatriotic ways, no harm of any sort could be 
alleged against them. One thing certain was, that 
christians, little was seen of them on the sunny side of life ; 
little amid the pride and pomp of the great Roman 
world. 38 The mistress of the nations sat on a daz- 
zling throne of universal dominion. Christianity 
seemed but the most sullen and intractable of the 
many slaves 39 that crouched at her imperial feet. 

edifices of greater pretensions be- 
gan to be reared in the principal 
cities. On this subject, see Prof. 
Blunt's Lectures on the First Three 
C< nfuries. 

38 Non spectacula visitis, non 
pompis interestis, etc. Min. Fel. 
Octavius, 

39 Each nation had its own par- 
ticular god ; but Rome, the uni- 
versal and eternal, had conquered 



Sobriety 
of the 



Gibbon. Such silence, however, 
was probably an affectation ; or, 
if real, it only shows how blind 
the wisest men are to things go- 
ing on around them. 

30 Latebrosa et lucifuga natio, 
etc., etc. Minucii. Fel. Octavius. 

37 Minuc. Fel. Oct. That is, 
with none of sufficient splendor 
to attract a heathen eye. In the 
times of the Emperor Severus, 



CH. IV.] ROME AND THE WEST. 317 

Such, was Christianity as seen from a secular point christian 

i i' point of 

of view. But the Christians, the meanwhile, lived view. 
in a world of their own. While Heathen Koine was 
still rearing her proud fanes in the upper air, be- 
witching idolatrous crowds with a glittering mockery 
of greatness, Christian Home was delving deep for 
her foundations in the bowels of the earth. 40 Con- 
demned to seek refuge among the dead, she found in 
death itself a source of inspiration. While the King 
of terrors mowed the heathen down like grass, — a 
little ashes in an urn by the roadside being the fit 
symbol of their ephemeral existence, — his presence 
was welcomed among the Christians as adding new 
recruits to their spiritual muster-roll, swelling the 
mighty host of invisible defenders, and increasing 
the volume and the efficacy of that all-prevailing 
prayer, Thy kingdom come. The catacombs, 41 in cata- 
fact, were the temples, the altars, it might even be 
said the literature and theology, of the primitive 
Roman Church. 

Resorted to at first as inviolable places of sepul- {^f of 
ture, afterwards as convenient hiding-holes from con- 
stantly recurring persecution, 42 these regions of the 

all gods, and had a place for all. work the plates are very ex- 

This claim to a spurious Catho- act, and wonderfully suggestive. 

licity is finely stated in the Oc- Christian Catacombs have been 

tavius. found also in Naples, Syracuse, 

40 Impia Roma suis scrutata est Malta, etc. See Gieseler, § 70, 

molibus astra: n. 11. Northcote's Roman Cata- 

Scrutata est terrae viscera combs (London, 1857) is one of the 

Roma pia. latest works on the subject. 

— lv Subterran. Bom. Anonymi. 4 ' 2 " Alexander is not dead, but 

41 Aringhi Roma Subterranea. lives above the stars, and his 
The magnificent work of Perret body rests in this tomb. He 
brings the subject down to the ended his life under the Emperor 
more recent discoveries: Cafe- Antoninus, who, when he saw 
combes de Rome, par Louis Perret : himself much surpassed in con- 
Paris, 1855. In this splendid ferring benefits, returned hatred 



818 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. in. 

dead became the living heart of a most earnest faith ; 
the very shrine of the hallowed and stirring associa- 
tions which the Resurrection of the dead," the Com- 
munion of saints, and the nearness of the Appearing 
of the King of Glory, could never fail to inspire. 
They were tioi\Lr\-r\pia — dormitories of those who slept 

wors2p 0f m Christ; arew — sacred threshing-floors, in which 
the good grain was separated from the chaff, and 
garnered up for future seed-times and harvests ; con- 
cilia martyrum — where the living martyrs and the 
dead could meet in conference, as it were, and take 
sweet counsel together/ 3 Nor was a tragic element 
-wanting, to give force and depth to suggestions of 
this kind. Sometimes the myrmidons of power, 
having hunted the faithful from the daylight, would 
venture down in hot pursuit of them to their subter- 
ranean retreats. A Bishop would be torn from the 

eSent altar** ail( i ruthlessly despatched. A knot of wor- 
shippers would be slaughtered amid their sacred 
rites, or walled up to perish of speedy suffocation. 

for kindness. For when he was § 70. Felix, Bishop of Rome 

bending the knee to offer the sac- after Dionj^sius, is said in the 

rifice of prayer to the true God, Liber pontificalis to have first in- 

he was led away to punishment, troduced the custom of celebrat- 

what times!" Inscription, ing the Eucharist over the tombs 

translated in Maitland's Church of the martyrs. Night-worship 

in the Catacombs. in cemeteries gave occasion to 

43 The custom of worshipping the 34th Canon of the Council of . 

in cemeteries, of celebrating the Elvira, which forbids candles to 

natalitia of the martyrs about be used in those places, " lest the 

their tombs, and especially of spirits of the Saints should be 

feasting or worshipping in such disquieted." See Bingham's An- 

places by night, proved, also tiquities, xxiii. iii. 16 and 17; xx. 

a source of superstitions and vii. 10 ; viii. i. 9 ; etc., etc. 
abuses. The great care of the 44 This is said to have been the 

Christians in burying their dead end of Stephen: S. Stephan. Acta 

began to degenerate before the apud Surium, August 2 ; Mar- 

end of the third century into a tyrolog. Roman. 
fondness for relics. See Gieseler, 



CH. IV.] ROME AND THE WEST. 319 

All who suffered thus, lived, in the faith of the survi- 
vors, on a glorious equality. The infant martyr and 
the hoary-headed Bishop alike slept in Christ, alike 
awaited His appearing. The same simple inscrip- 
tion, In Pace, 45 was a sufficient record of them both. 
Thus the inania regna, the mere phantom realms of 
Dis as Heathendom regarded them, became to 
Christian faith the most living and most real of all 
commonwealths. Persecution gave intensity to this gj™ est 
feeling. The catacombs were its expression. Fired 
with this belief, the Christians closed their eyes to 
their own apparent inferiority ; knowing that at 
any moment, suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, 
the plant growing underground might rise and come 
forth victoriously to the light of day. 

In this spirit and with this faith, the Poman Church 
acted as if the great Babylon were already given to it 
in possession. Its seven Deacons, assisted by seven 
Subdeacons, administered the charities of the Church, 
and had charge of the poor in the fourteen Hegiones 
into which the city was divided. The Presbyters, as- 
sisted by the Acolyths, labored in the "Word and the 
Sacraments. The large number of Exorcists sprang Wo ^ in s 

O sr o system 

from a deep consciousness of a warfare with more than gyjch 
flesh and blood, — a vivid belief in the near presence 
and malignity of demoniacal possession. Over all 
the Bishop was supreme ; the foremost leader and ex- 
ample in times of peace, the most prominent victim 
in the day of persecution. 46 There was little attention 

45 Or, VIBAS IN PACE. The 4fi There is no good reason to 

earliest inscriptions are the most doubt that in the third century 

simple : — " Dormit," " quiescit," Callistus, Urbanus, Pontianns, An- 

" depositus est," and the like; terus. Fabianus. Cornelius, Lucius, 

the formula in pace, hem-ever, al- Stephen and Sixtus successively 

most always being- added. exchanged the mitre for the Mar- 



Public 
services 



320 HISTORY OF THE CHUECH. [BK. III. 

Preaching, paid to preaching, in the modern sense of the word. 
The Church services, which at first were probably in 
Greek, were, as the Latin element increased, 47 trans- 
lated into the language understood by the people, 
and developed into a minute and elaborate system 
of instruction. Beyond this, teaching seems to have 
taken the familiar, expository, conversational form. 
In publicum muta, in angulis garrula, as the heathen 
expressed it, the Church addressed herself to individ- 
uals rather than to crowds ; so that for more than three 
centuries pulpit eloquence was almost unknown. 48 But 
the business of the Church seems to have been admi- 

Tiement. rably managed. The paternal element had not swal- 
lowed up the fraternal. The People took a decided 
interest in all affairs : and occasionally, through those 
popular heroes the Martyrs and Confessors, they ex- 
erted an undue and dangerous influence. Hence the 
exuberance of Church life broke out frequently into 
faction, and once into a formidable schism. But there 
were plenty of legitimate channels for popular zeal. 
Some fifteen hundred poor, besides widows and vir- 

charities. gins, 49 were supported by the voluntary contributions 
of the faithful. So lavish was the bounty thus diffused, 
that it created among the heathen suspicions of great 
stores of hidden wealth. In the reign of Valerian, 
Archdeacon Laurentius was summoned and interro- 



Deacon 
Lauren- 
tius. 



tyr's crown; five of them within mentions it as a peculiarity of 

the space of about eight years. Rome that there was no teaching 

See Pagi Breviar. PP. R. The in the Church. See Milman's Lai. 

testimony of the Catacombs has Christianity. Minucius Felix ex- 

made this fact more certain. plains, that the Christians would 

47 In the Catacombs Greek in- have been ready enough to dis- 

scriptions abound ; and sometimes course in public, if they had been 

even the Latin inscriptions are allowed. 



graven in Greek characters. 
4B Sozomen (Feci. H. vii. 



Euseb. vi. 43. 



19) 



CH. IV.] KOME AND THE WEST. 321 

gated on the subject. 50 He promised, if one day were 
granted, to reveal the Chnrch's treasures. He re- 
deemed his pledge, having taken care in the mean 
time to sell the church-plate and give the proceeds 
to the poor, by bringing a great crowd of these living 
"jewels" into the presence of the astonished and an- 
gry judge. For this he was slowly broiled to death 
on a heated iron grate, and became the most popular 
of Roman martyrs. But it was not to the poor of Bounties 
Home merely that the bounty of the Church was ex- churches, 
tended. Early in the second century Dionysius of 
Corinth had reason to laud the Christian sympathy of 
Rome. 51 In the Decian persecution the tide of liber- 
ality rolls back in fervid acknowledgments from the 
brethren of Arabia and Syria. 52 Somewhat later, Dio- 
nysius sends a ransom for the Cappadocian Christians 
carried into captivity by the Gothic invaders of Asia 
Minor. Thus early Rome deemed it more blessed to 
give than to receive. Her well-ordered charities, even 
more than her consistent policy, were laying the foun- 
dations of that power over the hearts of men which 
later Rome afterwards so grievously abused. 

The temporary outbreak against the Christians Persecu- 

tions a d 

towards the end of Aurelian's reign, and the more 274, 303. 
systematic persecution under the Emperors Diocle- 
tian and Maximian, commonly called the tenth, added 
many names to the roll of Martyrs, and raised up 
some vigorous defenders of Christianity : among oth- Arnobius, 
ers two African rhetoricians, Arnobius 53 and Lactan- 

50 Three days before, his Bishop "Thou shalt follow me in three 

Sixtus (or Xystus) had been borne days !" 

to execution. Laurentius followed 51 Euseb. iv. 23. 

him in tears, saying, "Whither go- 5 ' 2 Euseb. vii. 5. 

est thou, father, without thy son?" 53 Arnobius, a heathen rhetori- 

To which the Bishop answered, cian, is said to have been converted 
14* 



322 



HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. 



[be. m. 



Heathen- 
ism ex- 
hausted. 



tius. In the latter of these persecutions the rancor 
of the heathen seems to have exhausted itself. The 
world was growing sick of its own atrocities. When 
Constantine entered Rome a victor, 54 his rival Maxen- 
tius having perished in battle under the walls of the 
city, and when the long-hated Cross 65 was publicly set 
the P c h ross f lr P m triumph, the mighty revolution seems hardly to 
have excited a murmur among the body of the people. 
Yet it cannot be supposed that the number of believ- 
ers had much increased during the times of the perse- 
cutors. It was rather that heathenism had become 
unnerved. Its strength had been quietly sapped by 
the pervading pressure of the Truth. Accordingly, 
when the time was fully come, its ramparts crumbled 
and fell ; sinking and disappearing without apparent 
cause, as the walls of Jericho sank before the persist- 
ent faith of the chosen people. 

But the boon of external peace was far from bring- 
ing with it a corresponding freedom from internal 
feuds. The persecution had created a new sore, by 
exciting a bitter feeling against the tvaditores : per- 
sons, that is, who under fear of death had betrayed 
sacred books or vessels .to the imperial satellites. 
The victory, therefore, was hardly yet achieved, 
when the elements of faction, which had so often 
appeared before in Italy and North Africa, came 



New- 
troubles. 



by a dream. He wrote a work in 
seven Books on the vanity of idols, 
and the superstitions of the Gen- 
tiles. He also exploded the slan- 
ders so industriously circulated 
against the Christians. Hierony- 
mus in Addit. ad Chronic. Euseb. 
For Lactantius, see note to ch. 9 
of this Book. 



54 See ch. 9 of this Book. 

55 The following is the inscrip- 
tion : Hoc salutari signo, vero for- 
titudinis indicio, civitatem ves- 
tram tyrannidis jugo liberavi, et 
S. P. Q. R. in libertatem vindicans, 
pristine amplitudini splendorique 
restitui : Euseb. Life of Constan- 
tine, i. 31. 



CH. IV.] ROME AND THE WEST. 323 

suddenly to a head once more in the famous schism 
of the Donatists. 

It was a dispute as to the succession of the See of donate 
Carthage. 56 Csecilianus had been elected against the a. d. 311. 
intrigues of two competitors, Botrus and Celeusius ; 
but, unfortunately, owing to these intrigues, the Nu- 
midian Bishops did not assist at the consecration. 
The disappointed party rallied a formidable opposi- 
tion. Lucilla, a lady of influence and wealth, with 
certain of the senior es j>opuM, got together a Council 
of seventy Numidian Bishops, who condemned Cse- two 
cilianus on two charges. He had been ordained by against 
a traditor, it was said, — namely, by Felix, Bishop nus , a. d. 
of Aptunga ; he had forbidden food to be carried to 
some of the Confessors in prison. It is probable 
enough that he had opposed the extravagant devo- 
tion paid to these popular idols. 67 On these grounds 
he was condemned by the Council ; and Majorinus, 
a creature of Lucilla, was made Bishop in his stead. 
The consecrator, in this instance, being a certain 
Donatus Bishop of Casse Mgrse in Numidia, the Donatus. 
Schism received its name from him, and its followers 
were called Donatists or jyirs Donati. The name 
was confirmed to them by the rise of a second 
Donatus, 58 whose ability and zeal made him after- 
wards a prominent leader of the sect. 

The question was submitted, on their part, to the Appeal to 
Emperor Constantine, — the first instance of the kind tine^D. 
recorded in Church history; and at his instance 

56 S. Optati de Schismate Don- ceiring the Sacrament she kept 

atist, Ed. Dupin. kissing a bone of some Martyr or 

67 Optatus says, that "Lucilla, other, as if she preferred that to 

just before the persecution, was the Sacred Feast." de Sch. Don. 

sharply corrected by Csecilianus, i: 16. 

then Archdeacon, because in re- 58 S. Augustin. de Hceres. 69. 



324 



HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. 



[bk. III. 



Donatists 
con- 
demned. 

A. D. 

314-316. 



three Bishops of Gaul met in Council with Melchi- 
ades the Roman prelate and fifteen Italians, to put 
an end to the dispute. Cgeeilianus was acknowledg- 
ed, and the Donatists were condemned. The latter, 
being similarly rejected afterwards at Aries 69 and 
other places, 60 broke off entirely from the commu- 
nion of the Church. Regarding the Catholics as 
corrupt, apostate, and defiled by communion with 
traditores, they would admit neither their baptism, 
ordination, or religious vows, as of any validity 
whatsoever. 

The movement was, in fact, one of the many bitter 
fruits of that root of bitterness, which under the suc- 
cessive forms of Judaic concisionism, philosophic en- 
crateia, Phrygian enthusiasm, ISTovatian rigor, and 
in short phariseeism in general, had followed pace by 
pace the progress of the Truth, and had cast a baleful 
shadow upon all its triumphs. Africa had suffered 
more from it than any other portion of the Church, 
council of ]But it was rife everywhere. The Council of Eliberis 61 

Elvira. « 

or Elvira in Spain, holden soon after the outbreak 
of the Dioclesian persecution, is redolent of its 
spirit. The attempt on ^he part of a few to bind 



Nature of 
the heresy, 



59 At Aries, Bishops were pres- 
ent from Gaul, Italy, Spain, Sicily, 
Sardinia, and K Africa, to the 
number, it is said, of 200: S. 
Augustin. contra Epistol. Parmc- 
niani, v. 5 ; among whom were 
three British Bishops: Eborius 
of York, Restitutus of London, 
Adelfius of Lincoln. See Bing- 
ham, ix. vi. 20. 

60 Appealing from the Synod at 
Aries to the Emperor, they were 
condemned again at Milan ; after 
which they conducted themselves 
with greater violence. 



61 In this austere Council, Ho- 
sius of Cordova was present, after- 
wards famous in connection with 
the Arian controversy. It for- 
bade absolution to the lapsed 
even at the point of death, pro- 
hibited the Clergy, even Sub- 
deacons, from the use of mar- 
riage, ordered double fasts for 
every month except July and 
August, etc., etc. It was, in fact, 
more like a Novatian than a Cath- 
olic Council. Nineteen Bishops 
and twenty-six Friests were 
present. 



CH. IV.] ROME AND THE WEST. 325 

their own virtues on the consciences of all, is popular 
with the crowd, and even commends itself to minds 
of a higher order. It is honorable to the great body 
of the Clergy of the early Church, that resistance to 
the encroachments of this spirit was steadfastly main- 
tained by them. They felt a responsibility for the 
weaker members of the flock, which brought them struggle of 
often into conflict with the hard and narrow notions against 
of influential laymen, especially of the class of con- 
fessors. While they honored the martyr spirit, they 
were forced to put a check upon the extravagances 
which so frequently flowed from such honor. Hence 
the charge of starving the Confessors brought against 
Csecilianus. Hence the unpopularity of his sober 
predecessor llensurius ; 62 of whom we learn, that, 
owing to the number of Martyrs, he excluded from 
the L^st the names of those who had put themselves 
in the way of persecution. Hence, in short, a strug- 
gle so close, so deadly, so confused at times, that it 
is difficult in many cases to distinguish which side 
of the line the Church occupied ; and in which truth 
itself seemed more or less divided. 

However this may be, Donatism continued for three JSf oua 
centuries to devastate the African Church. Constan- 
tine endeavored to conciliate it by lenient measures. 

62 He saved the sacred Books latter entrusted the sacred treas- 
by a stratagem : carrying them ures to some of the Seniores, but, 
off and hiding them, he put in fearing that he might not return 
their place in the Church a col- home again, took the precaution 
lection of heretical writings, to make out a list of them, and 
When the officers came in quest committed it to the charge of an 
of them, therefore, he readily elderly woman. The Seniores 
surrendered all that could be proved false to their trust; but 
found in the Church. The trick the list remained, and the mem- 
was afterwards revealed to the ory of Mensurius was vindicated. 
Proconsul, who summoned Men- S. Optat. de Schism. Donat. 
surius into his presence. The 



beaver of 
orthodoxy, 



326 HISTOKY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. in. 

But it claimed every thing, and was averse to peace. 
Among the half-converted savages of the rural dis- 
tricts it became an uncontrollable phrensy, defying 
the utmost force of the civil power to suppress it, and 
involving Catholics and schismatics alike in the com- 
plicated horrors of civil aud religious wars. 63 It was 
finally extinguished, only through the downfall of 
African Christianity itself, by the overrunning floods 
of Yandal and Saracen invasion. 
Rome the "phe long-continued struggle with these uncompro- 

standard- # o _ oo 1^ 

mising and bitter heretics strengthened the union 
that existed between the daughter Church of Car- 
« thage and her Roman mother ; and placed the latter 
more decidedly than ever at the head of the cause, 
not only of Italian but of North African orthodoxy. 
Indeed, throughout the West, to be in communion 
with Rome was to hate ISTovatianism, to abh$r the 
Donatists. In proportion, therefore, to the length 
and bitterness of the war with these rigid and power- 
ful sects, the ties that bound the provincial Churches 
to the great metropolitan standard-bearer became 
day by day more numerous and more strong. 
ciaim to And the Roman Church was the more decidedly 

the chair *> 

of s. Peter. comm itted to this position from the fact that the 
Donatists, claiming to be exclusively the Body of 
Christ, established an Episcopal succession of their 
own in the imperial city. This line of bishops ran 
on till the times of Pope Siricius, and gave occasion 
to the orthodox to dwell more than had previously 
been the case upon the succession from S. Peter, as 
a test of the Catholic Church, 01 — of the Catholic 

63 For a vivid account of the C4 S. Optat. de Schism. Donat. 
Circumcelliones see Milman's Hist. lib. ii. 2. The Donatists, he ar- 
of Christianity. gues, could count their Bishops 



CH. V.] CHURCH AND SCHOOL OF ANTIOCH. 327 

Church, namely, in the city of Rome. The constant 
repetition of this argument, legitimate enough in the 
question between the two lines of Bishops in Home 
and Carthage, had the effect nevertheless of unduly 
exalting the position of the great Western See, and 
in course of time' opened the way for encroachments 
upon the rights of other Churches. In this way the 
Donatist Schism became a most important element 
in the History of the Latin Church. 



CHAPTER Y. 

THE CHURCH AND SCHOOL OF ANTIOCH. 

While the West was thus absorbed in questions T he East 

theolog- 

of discipline or of practical religious life, the more ical - 
speculative East was intent on theology proper; 
Antioch and Alexandria continuing to be the centres 
of activity in this direction. 

Antioch, the head of the Syrian Churches, with 
more or less of a patriarchal influence over Cilicia, 
Phoenicia, Comagene, Osrhoene and Mesopotamia, 1 
had shared very largely in that general awakening 
of thought which distinguished the latter half of the 
second century. Theophilus, the sixth Bishop in Theoph- 

, r>iAT pit ilus, A. D. 

descent from the Apostles, a convert from heathen isi. 

back through. Macrobius, Encol- It was obvious, therefore, that the 

pius, Bonifacius, to Victor who claim which the Donatists made 

was sent from Africa to Rome in to the See of Peter had no historic 

the time of Constantine : the Ro- foundation. 

man Bishops could trace back l See Bingham's Antiquities, 

their line to S. Peter and S. Paul. \x. ii. 9. 



328 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bK. III. 

philosophy, was among the foremost in this respect. 
He wrote against Marcion, Hermogenes, and other 
heretics ; left an Apology in three books noted for 
elegance of style ; and was among the first to intro- 

Trinitas duce the word Trias or Trinity into common nse 
among theological writers. 2 At this period discus- 
sions with heretics, both oral and in writing, em- 
I ployed mnch of the time and demanded all the skill 
of the chief pastors of the Church. Snch discussions 
necessarily led to the study of philosophy and dia- 
lectics, and to a more critical and searching examin- 
ation of the sacred text. 

Babyiasa S. Babylas, 3 the twelfth in the succession, dis- 

martyr, v * ' 

a. d. 250. tinguished himself as a bold and prudent leader 
during the temporary occupancy of Antioch by the 
Persian king Sapor ; and was afterwards a Martyr 
in the Decian persecution. As he was led to execu- 
tion, he lifted up his voice in a song of triumph, 
"Return unto thy rest, O my soul, for the Lord 
hath dealt bountifully with me." Three youthful 
disciples suffered with him. As the officer was tak- 
ing off their heads, the saint cried aloud, " Behold, I 
and the children which the Lord hath given me." 

Fabius. "When the ISTovatian troubles broke out at Rome, 
Fabius, the immediate successor of Babylas, took 
part with the schismatics and summoned a Council, 
to which he invited also Dionysius of Alexandria. 
He died, however, before the Council could as- 
semble; and when it finally came together, the 

imn- cause of Novatian was condemned. Fabius was 

252. A ' D * succeeded by Demetrianus, and Demetrianus by that 

2 The three Persons of the Trin- 3 Cave's Lives of the Fathers, 
ity he distinguished as God, the vol. i. S. Chrysost. lib, de S. 
Word, Wisdom. Babyl. 



CH. V.] CHUKCH AND SCHOOL OF ANTIOCH. 329 

arch-innovator in doctrine and in morals, Paul of 
Samosata. 

The latter was no sooner seated in the episcopal f aul of t 

J- x t Samosata, 

chair, than he began to give general offence. His ±. D - 262 - 
pravity has been variously ascribed to a Judaizing 
leaven still working in the Syrian Church, 4 to inti- 
macy with the new Platonists who were then at the 
height of their celebrity, or finally to his own am- 
bitious and frivolous disposition. Much stress has 
been laid upon the last of these. Not content with 
the profound respect universally paid to the Clergy, 
he affected much of the state and assumed the airs 
of a man of the world, a philosopher, and hel esprit. 
He thus identified himself with a refined and intel- 
lectual but vainglorious circle, which flourished at 
that time in the luxurious capital of the East, 
cherished by the smiles of Zenobia, the renowned court of 

J ' Zenobia. 

and brilliant queen of Palmyra. The famous Lon- 
ginus was one of their great lights. With Christi- 
anity as a religion they had little to do ; but for 
Christianity as a philosophic system, based upon 
writings remarkable for their sublimity and beauty, 
they could hardly fail to entertain a certain respect. 
To win such men, and to make Christian life and 
doctrine palatable to them, may possibly have been 
an object with such a man as Paul. But the bulk 
of believers were too sturdy and too real to feel 
much sympathy with such liberality. Paul became 
odious to his brethren in proportion as he commend- 
ed himself to a more courtly circle. 

He was accused of pride, arrogance, luxury, and DCJJjJJ, 
venality. The hymns commonly sung to Christ as pfJi" st 

4 Newman's Avians of the Fourth Century, chap. i. sect. i. 



330 HISTORY OF THE CHUECH. [bk. HI. 

God, and which had been all along a chief bulwark 
of the Creed, he declared to be mere novelties of the 
date of the Roman Bishop Victor, 5 and forbade them 
to be nsed in his Church any more. In their place 
he substituted verses of his own composition, sung 
with great eclat by a trained choir of women. He 
held, or acted as if he held, the office of ducenarius ; G 
and delighted to be seen in the forum attended by a 
crowd, and seemingly absorbed in a multiplicity of 
business. In religious affairs also he affected much 
state ; preached with vehement gesticulations ; and 
encouraged the bad practice, afterwards shamefully 
prevalent in the Church, of applauding the eloquence 
of the preacher, instead of hearkening to his message 
in respectful silence. He connived at the abuse, on 
the part of the Clergy, of living on too familiar 
terms with adopted virgin " sisters ;" and set a 
scandalous example in this respect. To crown all, 
he took care to lay people under so many obliga- 
tions, or so to intimidate them by his threats and 
frowns, that hardly any one could be found to come 
forward as an accuser or witness against him. 
Heresy Such charges, in this and similar cases, may have 

living. arisen in part from theological resentment, and from 
the general prevalence in the Church of austere 
views. The earnestness with which they were urged, 
however, is an interesting fact, as showing that cor- 
ruptness of living could not be dissociated as yet 
from corruptions in the Faith. 
Error of The error of Paul, like that of Ebion, Theodotus, 

Paul. ' 

5 Compare Euseb. v. 28, and 30), whether he held such an 

vii. 80. office, or only affected the style 

c It is hard to say, from the of it. The office was named from 

letter of the Bishops (Euseb. vii. the salary, viz., 200,000 sestert. 



CH. V.] CHURCH AND SCHOOL OF ANTIOCH. 331 

and Artemon, consisted in a denial of the personal 
preexistence of Christ, and, of course, in a denial 
of the Trinity, except in snch sense as could be 
reconciled with Keo-Platonic views. Jesus he be- ^Snfsm. 
lieved to have been a mere man, though miraculous- 
ly conceived and supernaturally favored. To this 
man, growing up in sinless perfection, the Divine 
Word or Reason became united. Jesus thus dwells 
in the Divine "Wisdom, He is clothed with it, He 
participates in it. That He is the Divine Wisdom 
Paul was unwilling to confess. He believed in Him 
and adored Him as a sort of deified man. 7 

Alarmed by these novel views, which commended f p t p h e e al 
themselves both to the Judaizing and philosophizing Bishops, 
circles of the court, and which seem to have been 
conveyed in the form of captious and skeptical in- 
quiries rather than in clear definitions, 8 the Antioch- 
ean clergy acted on the principle of which so many 
precedents had already been afforded, and applied 
for relief to the neighboring Bishops. Dionysius of 
Alexandria, Hymenaeus of Jerusalem, Firmilianus 
the learned prelate of Csesarea in Cappadocia, and 
other distinguished pastors, were written to and in- 
vited to intervene. Dionysius could not come to 
Antioch ; but after a sharp correspondence with 
Paul 9 wrote to the Church a letter condemnatory 

T The heresy of Paul is quite His humanity. SeeMansi Concil., 

fully discussed in Mosheim's Hist. Council of Antioch. 

Commentaries on the First Three 9 Without accepting the letters 

Centuries. See, also, Gieseler, (given in Mansi Concilia) as g*en- 

Eccl. Hist. § 60, note 12. uine, I cannot but believe there 

8 His Ten Queries, not particu- was some such correspondence, 

larly well answered by Dionysius The assertion of the Council, that 

of Alexandria (if the Answer to Dionysius wrote without conde- 

the Ten Queries be his), embrace scending to notice Paul, applies 

most of the difficult passages of only to the letter laid before the 

the New Testament, in which our Council. 
Lord is spoken of according to 



332 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bK. III. 

of him, purposely omitting the customary form of 
salutation to the Bishop. The other chief pastors 

councils assem hled once and perhaps twice in Council ; but, 
owing to the evasions of Paul and the moderate 
counsels of Firmilianus, were satisfied with vague 
promises of repentance and amendment. 

Third The abuses and false teaching still going on, a 

Council o & o ? 

of Antioch third Council of the Church had to be assembled; 

A. D. 269. . ' 

on his way to which Firmilianus, one of the worthi- 
est and most respected of the prelates of his times, 
Death of was taken suddenly ill and departed this life in peace. 
He was a disciple and warm friend of Origen ; had 
taken part in a great Council at Iconium, in which 
Montanist baptism was rejected by the Bishops of 
Phrygia, Galatia, Cilicia and Cappadocia ; and, as 
we have seen, was a staunch supporter of Cyprian 
in his controversy with Stephen. It was owing to 
his high character rather than to the eminence of his 
See, that he exerted so great an influence in the 
MaicMon. matter of Paul. In his absence, Malchion a Pres- 
byter of Antioch, a sopjhist by education, and head 
of the Catechetical School, seems to have been the 
guiding and controlling spirit. Hitherto, Paul had 
Paul's been examined chiefly as to what he held, and by a 
d/tected. skilful use of phrases, or by vague professions of be- 
lief in the divinity of Christ, had managed to con- 
ceal his errors. Malchion questioned him more 
closely as to what he denied. 10 By this the heresy 
Letter of was uncovered. In an encyclical letter addressed 
council. " to Dionysius and Maximus, 11 and to all other 

10 Such, at least, is the spirit " That is, Dionysius of Rome 

of the questions given in Mansi and Maximus of Alexandria, the 

Concilia : e. g. — " non concedis latter having succeeded Diony- 

filinm unigenitum in toto sius the Great in that See a short 

salvatore dvotudai," etc. time before. 



CH. V.] CHURCH AND SCHOOL OF ANTIOCH. 333 

fellow-ministers throughout the world, Bishops and 
Presbyters and Deacons, and to the whole Catholic 
Church throughout the world in all places under 
heaven;" and written in the name of "Helenas, 
Hymenseus, Theophilus, Theotecnus .... and Mal- 
chion and Lucius, and others who are Bishops, Pres- 
byters or Deacons, .... together with the Churches 
of God :" the condemnation of Paul, with the ap- Paul and 
pointment of Domnus in his stead, was formally 
promulged and commended to the faithful every- 
where. " We have communicated this to you" — is 
their language to the Roman Pontiff — "that you 
may write and receive letters from him" (namely, 
from Domnus who had been elected in the place of 
Paul); "but the other (namely Paul) may write to 
Artemas if he pleases, and those that think with Ar- 
temas may have communion with him." 32 

This transaction, so public, so formal, so deliberate, J^ 110110 
involving a cause and a person of the highest im- 
portance, participated in by the foremost prelates 
of the times, and unanimously concurred in by all 
the Churches, is a striking illustration of the Catho- 
lic unity of this period. It is obvious that this no 

. -i -, n -in supreme 

unity involved no supremacy oi any particular bee. head. 
The Council wrote to the Eoman Bishop as to all 
other prelates and Churches, merely to inform him 
of what had been done, and to show him where he 
should extend the right hand of fellowship. 

It is an equally striking illustration of the firmness oneness in 

the faith 

and decision with which the essentials of the Faith 
were held. So long as the question could be made 
to turn on a mere word — namely, on the force of the 

12 Euseb. vii. 30. 






334 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [BK. m. 

term consuhstantial™ Paul was able by his sophistry 
to blind the eyes of his brethren. But when it came 
to the point of a simple affirmation or denial of the 
proper divinity of Christ, there was room for no fur- 
ther evasions. On that subject, at least, the mind of 
the Church was clear. 






Sect of 
Paul. 



After the sentence of the Council the party of Paul 
still held together, under the protection of Zenobia, 
and Domnus was unable to get possession of the epis- 
copal abode. But when Zenobia had been conquered 
by Aurelian, the question was referred, as we have 
seen, to the Italian Bishops, who adjudged the Church 
property to the orthodox side. A sect of Paulites, 
however, or Samosatenians, continued in existence 
during the rest of the century. 

Xoch / The struggle with this heresy had an influence, 
perhaps good in the main, though not unmixed with 
evil, upon the theological development of the Anti- 
ochean Church. A good effect was the increased 
interest awakened in the study of the Scriptures. 

Dorotheus. Dorotheus, a Presbyter learned in Greek and Hebrew 
who flourished till the times of Julian the Apostate, 

Eusebius. was a leader in this direction. So also Eusebius of 
Alexandria, who had been sent by Dionysius to take 

Anatoiius. p ar t in the controversy against Paul, and Anato- 
lius, an Aristotelian and eminent mathematician. 

13 The term was not accepted weakness of the best-considered 

by the Council, because in the words in defining the Faith, 

skilful hands of a man like Paul that notwithstanding this pre- 

it could easily be made to bear a caution, there was a tendency 

Sabellian interpretation. When among some of the most earnest 

it was afterwards adopted in the advocates of the Nicene Creed to 

Council of Nice, it was with an fall back into the error of Sabel- 

express understanding that the lius or into that of Paul. Mar- 

Sabellian gloss was not to be ad- cellus of Ancyra was an eminent 

mitted. It shows, however, the example of this. 



CH. V.] CHURCH AND SCHOOL OF ANTIOCH. 335 

There were, in short, many learned men, 14 with mnch 
study, much discussion, much effort to reconcile reli- 
gion with what was then considered science, — much 
earnest and thoughtful, and in some cases, it would 
seem, skeptical investigation. 

The Aristotelian method, which is better fitted for Bias 
the detection of bad reasoning than for the discovery error, 
of truth, was much in vogue there. There was also 
a vicious habit of making sacred themes the subjects 
of school exercises in declamation or debate. In ad- 
dition to all this, there was a subtle influence of the 
Judaizing spirit ; the existence of which was indicated 
by the fact that Quartodecimanism began to revive 
in Antioch towards the close of the century, 15 though 
in other quarters it had sensibly declined. 

Among the teachers who gave celebrity at this pe- Ludan 
riod to the School of Antioch, Lucian, surnamed the disciples. 
Martyr, labored with great zeal in the text of holy 
Scripture, but, falling into errors akin to those of Paul, 
seems to have merited the bad name of father of the 
Arian heresy. 16 His fault was atoned, in the eves of rather of 

t/ . . y " Arianism. 

contemporaries, by a glorious martyrdom. It was 
revived, however, in the memory of posterity, by the 
marked pravity of his disciples, Arius, Eusebius of 
Xicomedia, Maris of Chalcedon, Theognis of Nicsea, 
Leontius of Antioch, Asterius, and other distinguished 
men and women afterwards notorious in the Arian 
strife. At a later period, Chrysostom somewhat re- 
deemed the character of this School ; but what it 

14 Euseb. rii. 32. ject of this paragraph generally, 

15 Tillemont , J/e m. vol. iii. makes see Newman's Avians, i. 1. 

the cessation of Quartodecimanism 16 Arius claimed him — Theodo- 

in Asia more absolute than is war- ret. Heel. Hist. i. 5 ; and the Cath- 

ranted by his authorities. See Let- olics more or less admitted the 

terofConstantine to the Churches, claim — Theod. i. 4. 
Socrat. Hist. i. 9 ; and on the sub- 



336 



HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. 



[be. III. 



Martyr- 
dom of 
Lucian. 



gained in Mm, it lost in the person of the heretic 
Nestorius. 

The Christians of Antioch seem to have suffered 
less from persecution than their brethren in other 
places, and to have enjoyed on the whole a larger 
freedom. From the fury of Diocletian, however, or 
rather of Maximin, they did not escape so easily. 
Among others that suffered, Lucian was carried a 
prisoner to Mcomedia, where by his fervid exhorta- 
tions he restored some who had fallen from the Faith, 
and prepared them for the martyr's crown. He was 
starved to death in prison. His fellow-prisoners, it is 
said, 17 being at a loss for an altar on which to celebrate 
the Lord's Supper, he laid himself out on his back and 
said to them, This breast shall be your Table, and 
you standing round shall be my holy Temple. In 
this posture he continued for fourteen days, till at 
last with the simple confession, I am a Christian, he 
departed in the peace of God. 

But, as usual in times of trial, there were many 
Desperate weak souls unable to endure the torments or put up 
with the disgraces to which the tyrants resorted. 18 
Besides those who lapsed, some were driven to the 
alternative of self-destruction. Two virgins of An- 
tioch, well known in the city for their rank and 
beauty, drowned themselves to escape the hands of 
the soldiers. Similar acts of desperation occurred 
everywhere, and are impartially recorded by the 
early Church. The history of martyrdom is not a 
record of heroism only, or of unsullied faith ; it 
abounds with most instructive lessons of all possible 
shades of human frailty and imperfection. 



A living 
altar. 



shifts. 



1T Apud Surium, Jan. 7. 



18 Euseb. viii. 12, 13. 






CH. VI.] THE EGYPTIAN CHURCH. 337 



CHAPTER YL 

THE EGYPTIAN CHURCH. 

"Whatever there was of good in the labors of origen's 

disciples. 

Origen, remained and stamped itself npon the 
Chnrch mind of his age. His nnmerons disciples 
were able, orthodox and highly influential teachers. 
That they inherited so much of the solid merit and 
so little of the extravagance of their master, may be 
fairly attributed to the firm stand taken against the 
latter by Demetrius and the Alexandrine Church. 1 

Dionysius, surnamed the Great, a convert from Dionysius 
heathenism and a man of large learning, elected to 
the Episcopate of Alexandria the second in order 
after Demetrius, was one of the most eminent of 
these disciples. Like his master, he had been for 
some time at the head of the Catechetical School. 
The habit of examining and proving all things had 
been the means, under God, of bringing him to the 
Truth. He persisted in the habit; and that he 
might be " a wise money-changer," 2 quick in the 
detection of spiritual counterfeits, he gave much of 
his time to the perusal of heretical and philosophic 
books : — what scruples he had on the subject being 
specially removed by a vision. He thus qualified 
himself to take an intelligent part in the questions 
of the day. 

1 On this chapter see Neale's 2 " Be ye wise money-chang- 

JBoly Eastern Church. Eusebius ers" — a saying attributed to our 

Ecd. Hist. vi. 26, 30, 35, and Lord, or to some one of His 

parts of Book vii. Apostles. 



838 HISTOBY OF THE CHUECH. [bk. m. 

conduct. 6 ^ S noD l e conduct in the Decian and Yalerian per- 
secutions, and in the great plague that followed, has 
already been alluded to in the third chapter of this 
Book. It shows his thorough good sense, that, in the 
latter calamity, he caused those who did their duty, 
and perished in ministering to the sick, to be enrolled 
in the rank of Martyrs. 

« e ge Like Cyprian, his great contemporary, he kept up 

Novatian. the friendliest relations with the Roman Church. In 
the schism that broke out there, having made him- 
self acquainted with the merits of the case, he took 
the side of Cornelius ; and when Novatian wrote to 
him, by way of apology, that he had been forced 
against his will to take the Bishopric, he exposed the 
hollowness of the pretence by quietly advising him 
to resign. 3 On the vexed question of the day, the 
treatment, namely, of those who had fallen from the 
Faith, the Alexandrine rule was milder than that 
which commonly prevailed. In the West it was con- 
sidered a great stretch of charity, that those who had 
given evidence of repentance before being taken with 

Lenity to a mortal illness, should be allowed the communion 
e apse 'at their death. In Alexandria, the indulgence was 
granted without reference to the time at which peni- 
tence began. Novatian severity, therefore, won little 
favor there. So widely, however, had the seeds of 
that error been scattered through the world, and so 
strong was the leaning towards austere views, that 
Dionysius found it necessary to warn his people on 
the subject, both orally and in writing. He wrote, 
also, against Novatian to the Churches of Armenia 
and Asia Minor; looked with much concern upon 

3 Euseb. vi. 45. 



CH. VI.] THE EGYPTIAN CHUKCH. 339 

tlie effort made by Fabius in Antioch to have the 
heresy endorsed by a Council of that Church ; and it 
was through his influence mainly that the Council, 
when convened, decided against the wishes of their 
recently departed Bishop. A little while later he had 
the satisfaction of announcing to the Roman prelate 4 The 
that all the Churches of the East, previously divided united.* 
on the subject, were restored to peace, and that all 
the chief pastors were in a state of delightful con- 
cord. 

The cultivated tone of the Alexandrine Church ren- cMiasm. 
dered it comparatively free from the sensuous or en- 
thusiastic heresies. In Arsinoe, however, and the 
surrounding district, the Millenarians effected a lodg- 
ment for a while ; their literal interpretation of the 
Apocalypse having gained an eloquent expositor in 
the person of one Nepos, 5 a Bishop of good character, Nepos. 
who by hymns and discourses and pungent confuta- 
tion of the Allegorists, as the opposite party were 
called, stimulated the popular expectation of a tem- 
poral kingdom of the Messiah. After his death, his 
followers began to withdraw from communion. Be- 
ing simple-minded men, they had a vague feeling, 
perhaps, that the Church was becoming too scholarly 
and intellectual. 6 Dionysius made a visit to the dis- 

4 Baronius contends that the nysius of Rome, Demetrianus, the 
letter refers to the question of immediate successor of Fabius, is 
Rebaptizing ; in proof of which particularly mentioned among the 
he urges that Antioch was the harmonized Bishops. See Euseb. 
only part of the East disturbed by Eccl. Hist. vii. 5. 
Xovatianism. There is no ground 5 Euseb. vii. 24. 
for this assertion. On the con- 6 Observe the slightly patron- 
trary, the fact is patent that Dio- izing but kindly and charitable 
nysius wrote on the subject of way in which Dionysius praises 
Novatianism to many churches, "the village presbyters and teach- 
in addition to which it is to be ers" who met him in conference, 
noticed that, in the letter to Dio- Euseb. vii. 24. 



340 HISTOEY OF THE CHUECH. [ek. in. 

affected region ; invited the Clergy and people to a 
victorious public conference; conciliated them by warm ex- 
pressions of esteem for their departed Bishop ; made 
many judicious concessions; and finally, after three 
days of charitable discussion, convinced them of the 
sin and folly of their course. In the agitation of this 
subject, the letter of the Apocalypse gave him so 
much trouble that he was disposed to question the 
authority of the Book. But, with his usual modera- 
tion, he refrained from rejecting "what so many of 
the brethren highly esteemed." Suspecting " a sense 
in it that lay deeper than words," he was content 
" to admire it the more" in proportion as his " reason 
failed to sound the depths of its meaning." He ar- 
gued, however, that it was written by some other 
than S. John the Apostle. 7 
Baptismal In the Baptismal controversy, Dionysius was more 

question. -*■ '> 7 \ 

anxious for peace than for victory to either side. His 
own mind, it would seem, was not quite made up on 
the subject. 8 He had before him the case of those, 
who, having left the Church, had afterwards re- 
turned ; or who, having been initiated in some sect, 
had received from them a baptism profane and even 
blasphemous in form ; or of those whose doubtful 
or defective baptism had been covered, as it were, 
by long communion in the Church. Whether he 
contemplated distinctly the question of a baptism 
unobjectionable in form, but defective in respect of 
an authorized minister, the extracts from his writings 

7 His doubts were based chiefly 8 Neale's positive declaration, 
on differences of style, which he that he was opposed to the re- 
points out with much acuteness in baptizers, is not warranted at all 
the manner of modern criticism, by the passages cited in its favor : 
but in a more reverential spirit. Holy. East. Church, i. 7. See Eu- 
See Euseb. vii. 25. seb. vii. 5, 9. 



CH. VI.] THE EGYPTIAN CHURCH. 341 

given by Eusebius are insufficient to determine. 
However this may be, lie bad no sympathy with the ^jj 5 
arbitrary course of the Roman Bishop. " The cus- 
tom (of rebaptizing)," he urged, " is not now intro- 
duced for the first time, nor in the African Church 
only. It was known long ere this, under Bishops 
before us, and in populous provinces ; approving 
itself to the Synods holden at Iconium and Synnada, 
and to many of the brethren. I cannot bear that 
they should be embroiled by a reversal of their 
decisions. For it is written, Thou shalt not remove 
the landmarks of thy neighbors, which thy fathers 
have set." 

This temperate course did much towards allaying Persecu- 

x " ° tion, A. D. 

the heat of the controversy ; the renewal of persecu- 257. 
tion, under the Emperor Valerian, probably did 
more. During the prevalence of this storm, the 
forty-two months of which naturally suggested 
visions of Antichrist, Dionysius being banished 
from his See to Cephron in Libya, labored for the 
spread of the Gospel in the parts thereabout, and 
wrote two of the Epistles called Paschal Letters, otters* 1 
The custom of thus announcing to the Church the 
beginning of Lent and Easter Day, with religious 
exhortations suitable to the season, became a prerog- 
ative of the See of Alexandria, and was confirmed to 
it by canon in the great Council of Nicsea. 

In the Sabellian controversy with some of the sabeiiiaa 

" contro- 

Clergy of Pentapolis, already referred to in the versy. 
fourth chapter of this Book, and in the painful pro- 
ceedings connected with Paul of Samosata, an im- 
portant step was made towards that distinctness of 
conception with regard to the great verities of the 
Creed, which was becoming more and more neces- 



342 



HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. 



[be. in 



Charity 

and 

wisdom. 



The term 
" of one 
Sub- 
stance." 



sary to the continuance of peace. The former case 
showed how easily the most orthodox might fall into 
seeming heresy, 9 for want of guardedness and pre- 
cision in the use of terms. But Dionysius had the 
grace to explain his meaning. His contemporaries 
had the still rarer grace to accept his explanation. 
Had it proved otherwise, Arianism might have risen 
upon the Church a half century sooner than it did, 
and Alexandria, like Antioch, might have numbered 
an arch-heretic among its Bishops. In later times, 
when controversy became more bitter and charity 
more rare, there was less willingness to admit the 
soundness of Dionysius. 10 But his defence with pos- 
terity is his undoubted humility and moderation. 
With a certain independence of mind and freedom 



of 



expression, 



characteristic of the Alexandrine 



School, he was aware of the imperfections of human 
thought and human language. For this reason he 
was wary of the use of the term co?isubstaniial. u 
Its meaning was not yet settled in the Church, and 
a word of unsettled meaning is always liable to 
abuse. For the same reason he was ready to ex- 
amine and reexamine, to discuss, to explain, to 
retract if necessary, to understand those who were 



9 Intent upon vindicating the 
personality of the Son, and hav- 
ing in view His human nature 
only, he said : " The Son of God 
was made and produced. He is 
not proper in His nature, but dif- 
fering in essence from the Father, 
as the vine from the vine-dresser 
and the ship from the shipwright ; 
for seeing that He was made, He 
was not before He was produced." 
His meaning is defended in S. 
Athanas. de Sentent. 8. Dionys.; 
in Bull, Defens. F. N.; in ETeale's 



Holy. Fast. Church ; and in Bur- 
ton's Testimonies of the Ante-Ni- 
cene Fathers. 

10 S. Basil, e. g., regarded him 
as Fons Arii. 

11 Which he seems to have 
used, however, for Athanasius 
says to the Arians (in a passage 
quoted by Burton in his Testi- 
monies etc.), "If the patrons of 
this heresy think that Dionysjus 
agreed with them, let them also 
acknowledge the term consubstan- 
tial which he used in his Defence, 



CH. VI.] THE EGYPTIAN CHURCH. 348 

opposed to him in opinion, and, if possible, to put 
himself in a position to be understood by them. 12 
In this respect, the disciples of Origen and the 
Alexandrine School seem to have been in advance of 
most of their contemporaries. 

Dionvsius was succeeded bv Maximus, and Maxi- Era of the 

*> . . Martyrs, 

mus b y Theonas ; from whose patriarchate, that is, a- d. 284. 
from the first year of the reign of the Emperor Dio- 
cletian, began the so-called era of the Martyrs : the 
Alexandrine Church, having adopted that epoch, 
instead of the Incarnation, as the beginning of its 
years. During all this time, the Catechetical School 
continued in a flourishing condition under Clement 
II ; under Pierius, who by his many able writings 
won the title of the second Origen ; and under The- 
ognostus, Serapion and Peter. On the death of 
Theonas, Peter, the last of these, surnamed the reter the 
Martyr, succeeded to his place. He had the honor 
of being the first Bishop of Alexandria who sealed 
his testimony with his blood. 

The internal troubles common to all the Churches Troubles, 
at this period, and which the Egyptian Church 
under a succession of able and saintly Bishops had 
rather pruned and kept down than really eradicated, 
began now to show themselves in the utmost rank- 
ness and profusion. 

The See of Lycopolis, for some reason now un- Meietian 
known, had an influence in Egypt second only to 1° d! soi. 
that of Alexandria. Meletius, its incumbent at the 

and that the Son is of the sub- charity and moderation, I doubt 

stance of the Father, and also His whether the early Church affords 

eternity." a better lesson than the conduct 

12 In the way of good sense, of Dionysius as described in Eu- 

good temper, and real Christian seb. vii. 24. 



344 



HISTOKY OF THE CHURCH. 



[bk. 



m. 



Its rapid 
spread. 



Monach- 
ism, The- 
l-apeutse, 
Anchorets, 
etc. 



end of the third century, was accused of apostasy, 
and in a Council holden at Alexandria was convicted 
and deposed. He refused to submit to the sentence. 
Availing himself, as was common with schismatics, 
of the strong and general sympathy for austere views, 
he broke off into a sect ; adopted a narrow plat- 
form akin to Novatianism ; and proceeded to con- 
secrate new Bishops for all the principal Sees. The 
schism made itself acceptable by some peculiar rites ; 
by religious dances ; by promises of a Heaven suited 
to gross and fanciful conceptions. Among its favor- 
ers, for a while, was that restless and subtle spirit, 
the celebrated Arius. Its rapid spread may be ac- 
counted for in part by the persuasive talents of its 
leaders. It would seem to indicate, however, that 
in Egypt as in North Africa, and indeed in all parts 
of the world, the great mass of believers were but 
partially instructed ; 13 and that the seeds of heresy, — 
crude notions, half-knowledge, one-sided views, and 
vague and restless emotionalism, — must in the na- 
ture of things have been widely disseminated. 

All this might have led to more extensive revolts, 
if a vent for the errant enthusiasm so common in 
those times had not been providentially afforded, in 
the spontaneous rise and growth of monastic or an- 
chorite establishments in the deserts of the Thebais. 
In reference to this movement, considering that it 
arose among the Laity altogether, the course of the 
Church was eminently tolerant. The Therapeutic 14 
of the first century, " citizens of Heaven upon 



J3 Alexandria, in fact, with its 
high-toned, refined and subtle or- 
thodoxy, and with its essentially 
Greek spirit, must have been very 
far in advance of the simple (and 



perhaps sensuous) faith of the re- 
moter districts. 

14 See Book i., ch. 4. On this 
subject generally, see Sozomen, 
Eccles. Hist. i. 11-14. 



CH. VI.] THE EGYPTIAN CHURCH. 345 



l 5 



probably a communistic Christian 
sect. Frontonius and seventy companions led the 
life of recluses, in the middle of the second century. 
But when the calamitous times of Decius and his 
successors made common life a burden almost too 
great for human strength ; when the feeling, that 
things were coming rapidly to an end, 15 was well- 
nigh universal ; men fled from society in all direc- 
tions, so that the deserts of Egypt and Mount Sinai 

became populous with anchorets. It was a free and Free 

j- i move- 

spontaneous movement, the more remarkable that it ment - 

sprang up at a period when the Church, by her fre- 
quent services, by her exact discipline, and by her 
continuous struggle with ascetic extravagances, 
seemed committed against all forms of eccentricity, 
or even, it may be said, of private judgment in re- 
ligion. 

S. Antony, the father of Christian Monachism, s. Antony, 
was an eminent example of the spontaneousness of 
this movement. 16 Brought up in the seclusion of 
a pious home, and so. averse to the society of youths 
of his own age that his parents though rich never 
sent him to school, he was left an orphan at twenty, 
without a friend or companion except his sister, and 
almost without an acquaintance in the world. One 
day, in Church, not long after the death of his pa- His faith, 
rents, he heard the words of the Lord, " If thou 
wilt be perfect, go sell that thou hast and give to 

15 S. Cyprian's Epistol. ad Be- tive sketch of a peculiar religious 
metrianum contains an elaborate experience, well worthy of att en- 
argument to that effect. tion on the part of thoughtful 

16 Sozomen, Eccles. Hist. i. 13; Christian men of every age of 
S. Athanas. Vita S. Anton. This the world. For an appreciative 
work is possibly spurious, or more though brief account of S. Antony, 
or less interpolated. It is none see Hase, Hint, of the Christian 
the less, however, a most instruc- Church, § 65. 

15* 



346 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bK. HI. 

the poor." Pie obeyed the divine injunction to the 
letter. 17 He went home, sold his goods, and distrib- 
uted the proceeds to his neighbors and to the poor, 
reserving only a small portion for the necessities of 
his sister. Shortly after, when again in Church, he 
felt himself particularly addressed by the words, 
" Take no thought for the morrow." His conscience 
smote him. He had been taking thought ! As soon 
as he returned home, therefore, he distributed his 
sister's portion along with the rest of his property ; 
providing for her, however, in a kind of religious 
house. 18 His subsequent course was in accordance 
of e £- with this beginning. Having heard, that if a man 
acter. ^{^ n0 £ wor k ? neither should he eat, he made manual 
labor a part of his exercises. In the same spirit, he 
endeavored to comply literally with the precept, 
" Pray without ceasing." Whatever his mind took 
up from the letter of Scripture was carried straight- 
way into practice, and so became indelibly stamped 
upon it. A more complete reaction from the ultra- 
spiritual and ultra-intellectual tendencies of the doc- 
tors of the Alexandrine School cannot easily be im- 
agined. 
a life It was a life, in fact, almost as much apart from the 

from the communion of the Church as from the ordinary ways 

world , , d d 

and the of the world : a life strictly and entirely between the 
soul and God. Of the experiences of such a religion 
no one can be a fit judge, but he who has been in some 

1T One of the latest examples son to doubt, his account of hrrn- 

of this intense individualism in self be true, 
religion is afforded in that curious 18 His sister appears to have 

and edifying- book, " The Lord's been like-minded with himself. 

Dealings with George Muller :" When the two met again at a 

— a most remarkable man and sin- later period, she was at the head 

gularly endowed with the " gift" of a flourishing sisterhood. 
of faith, if, as there is no good rea- 



(Jhurcli 



CH. VI.] THE EGYPTIAN CHURCH. 347 

way a subject of them. It is enough to notice, there- 
fore, without philosophizing upon a state in which 
outward and inward impressions seem to have been 
completely blended, that for some fifteen years in his 
cell, and for twenty years in the closer seclusion of his 
castle, 19 Antony battled with fleshly, worldly and de- 
moniacal temptations : 20 tamed his strong passions and Antony's 

. -, \. ,-n , .n battles. 

strong fancy into obedience to a still stronger will ; 
and acquired a fame which obliged him at last to re- 
ceive disciples, and to show his face again to his in- 
numerable eager admirers. When he issued from his 
retreat, it was observed with astonishment that he was 
as hale and youthful in appearance — neither fat nor 
lean, but with a light in his eye and a ruddy glow on 
his cheek — as when he originally entered. 

What was more remarkable, he was singularly pol- His power 
ished, quiet and self-possessed in his manners. The preacher. 
grace of eloquence was on his lips. To those who 
gathered around him he spake affectionately in the 
Egyptian tongue : 21 " Letters, my children, are good 
for our instruction ; but it is an excellent thing to ex- 
hort and teach one another. Do you, then, as chil- 

19 His first place of refuge was it slowly melted into air and dis- 
among the tombs, his second in a appeared. Vit. Anton. 

ruined castle, a haunt of serpents ' n There is reason to suppose, 

and wild beasts. that in most of the provinces of 

20 The tempter brought before the Empire ordinary teaching was 
him images of the wealth and still confined to the Greek and 
worldly pleasures he had given Latin languages. In North Africa, 
up ; assumed the shape of a beau- for example, it was a matter of re- 
tiful woman ; and when all this joicing, even as late as the times 
failed, filled his cell with demons of S. Augustine, that one Presby- 
who assumed beastly forms, and ter could be found who could speak 
left him almost dead from physi- in the Punic tongue. On this, see 
cal exhaustion. On one occasion, Miinter. Primord. Eccl. Afric. 
in the desert, the fiend threw a cap. v. In the East, however, the 
discus at him ; which when the Liturgies were translated into 
saint contemplated in surprise to various tongues. 

see such a missile in such a place, 



848 HISTOKY OF THE CHUBCH. [be. m. 

dren, tell your father what things you have learned ; 
and I in turn, as your elder, will give you the fruits 

His works, of my experience." To his persuasive preaching, mir- 
acles, it is said, were sometimes added. " The Lord 
healed many, in answer to his prayers; and many 
were delivered from unclean spirits." 22 He consoled 
the afflicted, he reconciled enemies, he composed dif- 
ferences, by simply urging upon men that " nothing 
in this world is to be preferred to the love of Christ." 

The Laura. With such a leader, the cell or the laura soon be- 
came more congenial to many minds than the social 
joys of the Church. Among the savage crags and 
the awful desolation of the mountainous region be- 
tween the Red Sea and the Nile a refuge was provided 
for those redundant souls who, with a strong desire to 
do, but an irresistible propensity to overdo, are apt 
to be jostled from the walks of common life, and are 
condemned either to inaction or to eccentric courses 
of their own. The Christian Church did not originate 
this movement : it belongs, in fact, to natural religion. 
She saw in it, however, some elements of good : and 
when, in the Dioclesian persecution, the strong man 

• An A° 1 n3 f °f the desert came down to Alexandria to see how it 

andria. fared with his brethren, — " prepared," as he expressed 
it, " either to combat himself or to behold the combat- 
ants ;" or when, soberly and prudently, with the gen- 
tleness of a woman, 23 he ministered to the wants of the 

22 Whatever may be thought himself and said : " Why criest 

of the miracles of S. Antony, his thou to me. I also am but a man. 

modesty and humility in connec- If thou believest in CnitisT whom 

tion with them are worthy of ad- I serve, then pray to God, and it 

miration. Thus Marcianus, a mil- shall be done." Then the man 

itary prefect, came to his door, believed, and called upon Christ, 

and was very importunate in his and his daughter was healed, 

request that he would cast out a Vit. Anton. 

devil which possessed his daugh- 23 There was a peculiar amia- 

ter. The saint at length showed bility about him. In the desert, 



CH. VI.] THE EGYPTIAN CHUKCH. 349 

Confessors in prison, — the very heathen respecting the 
sanctity of his character : then she began to glory in 
her Anchorets almost as much as in her noble army 
of Martyrs. The system, in fact, was but another New form 
form of confessorship. As one field closed by the sorship. 
cessation of persecution, a new field opened to that 
spirit of earnest emulation and eccentric heroism, 24 
which might be employed for good or might be per- 
verted to evil ; but which, for good or evil, was one 
of the strong elements of the practical religion of the 
times. 

The Dioclesian persecution raged terribly in Alex- The great 

*- rrn persecu- 

andria, and in all parts of Egypt. The martyrs were tion - 
more numerous and more eminent than at any period 
before. It rests on the testimony of eye-witnesses, 
that the sufferers were not only scourged and put to 
death ; but, in cases without number, were stretched 
on the rack, suspended by the hands, torn with pin- 
cers, seared with molten lead, roasted over a slow fire, 
suffocated with smoke, deprived of their eyes or other 
members, and, in short, treated with every inhumanity 

he not only raised food for himself, 24 The spirit of emulation — the 

but cultivated little patches of desire to do something that no 

ground for the benefit of chance one had done before — breathes 

travellers. The wild beasts at first through the annals of the ere- 

gave him trouble, by trampling on mites." Thus the Vita S. Antomi 

his corn. But one day he laid his begins : " A glorious contest have 

hand gently on one of them, and ye undertaken, in endeavoring to 

said to the rest : " Why trouble a equal or even to surpass the life 

man who does you no harm? De- of the Egyptian monks." In the 

part, in the name of the Lord." same way, S. Antony learned, late 

Afterwards they gave him no fur- in life, that there was one man on 

ther trouble. I cannot but think earth his superior in asceticism : 

that it was this sweetness of tern- namely, Paul, whohadlivedninety 

per, united to a dauntless courage years out of sight or hearing of 

and immovable self-possession, man. with only a palm-tree for 

that secured him immunity in Al- shelter and meat and clothing, 

exandria when less eminent be- S. Antony visited him in time to 

lievers were in constant peril. be a witness of his death. 



350 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. III. 

that the most fiendish, cruelty could suggest. 26 Peter, 
the Bishop of Alexandria, was among the last that 
suffered. When he was thrown into prison, his people 
collected in such numbers about his place of confine- 
ment that the soldiers who had been sent to put him 
to death were unable to enter by the door : but taking 
dbm'of" advantage of a dark and stormy night, they made a 
^ eter A 1i hole through one of the walls of his cell. The mar- 

a. d. on. o 

tyr understood their intention and aided them in it. 
Making the sign of the cross and saying, " Better that 
we should die than expose the people to danger," he 
stretched forth his head to the executioner, and it was 
stricken off. He is named by the Greeks " the Seal 
and end of the Martyrs." 
Anus and It is said that before his death, in consequence of a 

Alexin- 

der, a. d. vision he had seen, he solemnly warned the Church 
against Arius, who lay at that time under sentence of 
excommunication. His successor Achillas, however, 
paid no attention to the warning. Arius was not only 
absolved and admitted to the Priesthood, but, being 
set over the Church of Baucalis — one of the oldest and 
wealthiest in the city, — he became, on the death of 
Achillas, a prominent candidate for the vacant epis- 
copal chair. But in this he failed. Alexander was 
a new elected by unanimous consent. This disappointment, 
gathering, it was believed, cast a decided gloom upon the soul of 
Arius ; and is regarded as the beginning of that great 
cloud, fraught with ages of mischief and dissension, 
which, at the close of this period of history and at the 
opening of the next, we find overshadowing the most 
flourishing portions of the Church. 

26 Euseb. Eccl. Hist. viii. 



CH. VII.] THE CHUECHES IN GENERAL. 351 



CHAPTEK VH. 

THE CHUHCHES IN GENERAL. 

In that wonderful Epic which was for so many The great 
ages the Bible of the old classic world, and which 
next to the true Bible has entered in^pt into the mind 
of the European nations since, the Hero of the poem 
appears only at the beginning of the Action and at its 
close : his absence the meanwhile giving occasion for 
the development of the " excellence" first of one war- 
rior, 1 then of another, and so on through all the 
changeful issues of the fight, till the " gift," not of 
each leader only, 2 bnt of each nation, tribe or other 
division of the host has been duly exercised and 
brought ont to view. 

This is a summary of what may be called the divine qjJJJJ * 
plan of History in general ; more especially of the hiatoi T- 
History of the Church of God. The Word is the 
Alpha and Omega of it, the author and finisher, the 
beginning and the end. It is only, therefore, at the 
opening and the close that this divine Word is made 
fully apparent. In the long interval between, man is 

1 The uptarela of Diomede, of tor of it {11. iii. 66) ; Ulysses 
Agamemnon, etc. lliados v., xi., commends it to the rude minds 
etc. of the Phseacian youths. {Otlyp.s. 

2 The fact that " every good viii. 167.) It flows more sweetly 
gift" cometh down from above is and religiously from that most 
recognized by Homer in the per- faultless of the creatures of human 
sons of the most frivolous of his genius, the daughter of Alcinous. 
heroes and of the wisest and (Odyss. vi. 189.) Herodotus also 
most earnest. Paris reminds Hec- is a faithful witness to this truth. 



Lesson of 
the first 
three 
centuries. 



352 HISTOEY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. IH. 

the visible, and to the mere eye of flesh the principal, 
worker ; the all-snstaining Arm being manifested, oc- 
casionally, however, and to a greater or less degree, 
at those eventful epochs, 3 properly so called, which 
bring certain periods to a close, and so typify or pre- 
figure the full appearing of God's Kingdom at the 
end of time. 

The story of the First Three Centuries is but a 
minute portion of that wondrous plan; the mere 
infancy of a manhood, the real growth of which even 
yet (it may be)§lias hardly more than begun. But 
being beyond doubt a living portion, and in some re- 
spects singularly complete in itself, it exhibits more 
clearly than any other period the essential features 
of the whole, and may be rightly taken, therefore, as 
The p.en- the best representative of it. Its first age, accord- 
age, ingly, is eminently that of the Divine Arm laid bare 
to view. In His incarnate Presence, or in mighty 
demonstrations of spiritual power, the Hero of the 
epos Himself appears. Then follows a long and 
weary season of seeming absence. The great Sower 
has sown the seed, and gone His way to His rest ; 4 
the seed being left, as it were, to the natural fertility 
of the soil. Men, therefore, become the prominent 
The age of actors. First singly, then in groups or schools, then 
in local, provincial or national Churches, they appear 
The age of successively before us ; and in defeat 5 rather than in 
victory each does his utmost to sustain the cause. 
Finally, when patience has had her perfect work; 
when the aristeia of each lower agent has been dis- 

3 Epoch — a holding up, a pause, as in the lives of races or of na- 

a stop. It is remarkable, that in tions. See Hugh Miller's Testi- 

the great field of physical history moity of the Rocks. 
which has been opened by mod- 4 S. Mark, iv. 27. 
ern science, epochs are as manifest 5 2 Cor. vi. 9, 10. 



CH. VII.] THE CHUECHES IN GENERAL. 353 

played ; when the weakness and incompetency of the 
arm of flesh has been made sufficiently apparent: 
then, a marked Providential deliverance closes the 
first act of the drama ; the Roman world submits to 
the standard of the Cross ; and the first earnest is 
afforded of that crowning victory, the day and hour 
of which neither man nor angel can determine. 

But the Roman world, which was the first battle- ^ an 
field and the scene of the first great victory of the world - 
Gospel, was merely a narrow belt of highly civilized 
and intellectual nations around the shores of the 
Mediterranean ; and in the account already given of 
Carthage, Rome, Alexandria and Antioch, with in- 
cidental mention of other Churches, the story of the 
first three centuries is well-nigh told. So far as the 
working out of any great principle is concerned — 
whether of doctrine, discipline, or worship — little re- 
mains to be added. A brief notice of the other 
Churches, however, following the order in which 
they present themselves on the map of the world, 
may help the reader to form a more distinct concep- 
tion of the state of Christianity at this critical period 
of its history, and to appreciate more fully the na- 
ture and extent of the progress that had been so far 
made. 

In the provinces of Korth Africa already spoken The belt 
of in this Book, extending from the Atlantic Ocean Mediter- 
on the West to Cyrene on the East, and Bounded on ianedn - 
the South by Mount Atlas and the Libyan desert, North 
there were by the end of the third century at least Afnca ' 
one hundred episcopal sees, and possibly a much 
larger number. 6 The Southern borders of this nar- 

6 In the beginning of the fourth century the Donatists could bring 



354 HISTORY OF THE CHTTECH. [BK. in. 

row strip were exposed to the inroads of barbarous 
tribes, among which the Gospel had made little or 
no progress. It may be doubted, indeed, whether 
in the provinces themselves it had extended much 
further than it could be carried through the medium 
of the Latin tongue. Next in order towards the 
East, along the same belt, come Libya, Pentapolis 

Egypt. and Egypt, covering an area about three times as 
large as England, dependent more or less on the See 
of Alexandria, and governed by about one hundred 

Nubia. Bishops. In Nubia and Abyssinia there were prob- 
ably some imprisoned rays of Pentecostal light, but 
of the state of Christianity in those countries we have 

Arabia. n0 certain knowledge. Arabia, exclusive of Arabia 
Petrsea, numbered twenty-one dioceses,composed for 
the most part of clusters of village Churches, of 
which the chief See was Bostra, sometimes known 
under the name of Philadelphia. The missionary 
journey that Pantgenus is said to have made to 

India. India, in which he discovered some traces of the 
labors of S. Bartholomew and S. Thomas, is sup- 
posed by many to have been merely to some part of 
Arabia. On this point, however, there is room for 
little more than a baseless conjecture. Passing to- 
wards the North along the Asiatic section of the 
same belt of the Mediterranean, we come next to 

Palestine. Palestine, including Arabia Petrsea, in which we 
• 

together a Council of 2Y0 Bishops, chapter, my object is merely to 

In 8. Augustine's time there were give a general view ; and, the data 

466 Bishoprics. The multiplica- being imperfect, I have to rely for 

tion of dioceses was greater in the most part on conjecture. See 

Africa than elsewhere, the Don- Bingham's Antiquities, Book ix. ; 

atists having started it, and the and Maurice's Vindication of the 

Catholics following their example Primitive Church, etc. London, 

in self-defence. In the rest of this 1682. 



CH. VII.] THE CHURCHES IN GENERAL. 355 

find some forty-eight dioceses, dependent more or 
less on Jerusalem or Caesarea. 

The former of these Churches, which we left Jerusalem, 
under the new name of JSIia at the beginning of its 
Gentile succession in Hadrian's time, continued to 
cherish with some pride the name, and it is said the 
chair, of S. James ; and was regarded with no little chair of 
reverence as the oldest of the Mother Churches. In 
the history of her Bishops there seems to be more of 
the conventional type of saintliness, and perhaps 
somewhat more of the marvellous, than appears else- 
where. Narcissus, the thirtieth in order from S. ^ a J c ^J s » 
James, had not a few miracles attributed to him. 
On one occasion, at a vigil just before the Easter 
Feast, the lights were going out in the Church, but 
were restored — miraculously, it was thought — by the 
Bishop's ordering water to be brought and poured 
into the lamps. This holy man was a rigid enforcer of 
discipline. Offended at his strictness, three wretches his 

p . . accusers. 

were found to trump up an accusation against him, 
which they even went so far as to confirm by an 
oath. One of them prayed that he might perish by 
fire, another that his body might be eaten by a 
plague, a third that he might lose his sight, if their 
witness against the Bishop should be found untrue. 
Narcissus shrank from the blight of a calumny thus 
fearfully attested, and secretly retired to a hermit 
life. But the innocence of his character was fully 
vindicated. The accusers perished according to the 
tenor of their oaths ; and at length, after three suc- 
cessors in the episcopate had in the mean time done 
their work and departed to their rest, Narcissus ap- 
peared again as one risen from the dead, and at the 
request of the holy brethren resumed the chair he 



356 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [BK. III. 

^^nder.had abandoned. Alexander, a disciple of Origen, 
and Bishop at that time of a Church in Cappadocia, 
happening to come to Jerusalem in fulfilment of a 
vow, was seized upon by the faithful of the holy 
City and installed as coadjutor to their aged chief ; 
the irregularity being covered, it was thought, by a 
divine communication through a dream or vision. 7 

a patron This latter prelate proved to be a patron of learn 

ing. ing and of learned men ; and added a handsome 
Library to the attractions of the Church in iElia. It 
was he who, in conjunction with Theoctistus of 
Csssarea, upheld the cause of Origen against his 
Bishop Demetrius, and gave currency to the learn- 
ing and perhaps to some of the vagaries of that 
gifted teacher. He died a martyr, as we have seen, 

Hymen- in the Decian persecution. Hymenaeus, the second 
after him in order of succession, took an active part 
in the proceedings against Paul of Samosata, and 
lived long enough to be personally known to Euse- 
bius the Church historian. 

£Sine° f ^e Churches m Palestine were distinguished by 
many noble "wrestlers" in the tenth persecution, 
whose merits have been more particularly recorded 
than is common with the martyrs of the early 
Church. 8 It is a hideous story of imprisonments, 
tortures and monstrous inhumanities, relieved only 
by the vivid faith and indomitable spirit of the suf- 
ferers. Wonderful was the steadfastness of those 

Lively whose privilege it was to die for the Faith : more 

faith of the r & 

wonderful still the patient and meek endurance of 



mass of 
believers. 



the mines, or to a crippled life, dependent on the 

7 Euseb. vi. 9-11. 8 Euseb. Martyrs of Palestine. 



CH. VII.] THE CHUECHES IN GENERAL. 357 

charity of others in little better plight than them- 
selves. But the greatest marvel of all was the buoy- 
ancy of hope that sustained the large and timid 
crowd who were too insignificant, or perhaps too 
cautious, to share in the sufferings and the glory of 
the brave Confessors. The Churches were closed. 
Public services were suspended. The cemeteries 
and all other kinds of Church property had been 
confiscated. The Clergy were in prison, or in the 
mines, or in obscure hiding-places. Heathen wor- 
ship was revived with the utmost splendor ; and 
wherever one might look, the Church, as an organ- 
ized body, seemed to be almost extinct. Yet when 
a lull of a few days occurred in the times of Maxi- 
min, and a deceitful peace tempted the Christians 
once more to show themselves, the effect, we are 
told, was like a flash of lightning. 9 All places of 
worship were suddenly crowded; the cemeteries 
were thronged ; hymns and songs of joy and mutual 
congratulations everywhere resounded. It was like 
a tree breaking out into blossom in the midst of a Its effect 

° upon the 

winter's frost. So striking was the spectacle of heathen, 
single-hearted gladness thus suddenly exhibited, that 
many of the heathen beholding it, were led by a 
sympathetic feeling to attach themselves to the 
Church. 

Csesarea, not inferior to Jerusalem in influence or Csesarea. 
actual power, is known at this period chiefly for the 
countenance given to Origen by its Bishop Theoctis- 
tus, and for the part taken by Theotecnus in the 
case of the heretic Paul. It was also the scene of 
some of the most fearful of the atrocities of the 

9 Euseb. ix. 1. 



The 

further 

East. 



358 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [BK. III. 

great persecution. Further on, towards the North 
Tyre. comes Tyre, memorable for a noble Church edifice, 
destroyed and splendidly restored during the same 
trying times. There Origen laid down his weary 
life ; there also, under the leading of Methodius, 
began an endless series of assaults upon the memory 
of the Alexandrine teacher. 
Syria. The Syrian Church, which has repeatedly been 

before us in connection with Antioch, extended from 
the isle of Cyprus on the West to Mesopotamia on 
the East ; and in its different provinces eighty Bishops, 
more or less, might have been counted at this period. 
In the vast Eastern world that lay beyond the 
borders of the Roman Empire, the signs of an early 
knowledge of the Gospel are but few and faint. 
Edessa had been from Apostolic times a centre of 
light to Mesopotamia. Armenia was converted at 
the end of the third century by Gregory the Illumi- 
nator. Persia likewise received some rays of the 
Truth. There, however, the progress of the Gospel 
was not only stayed for awhile, but was violently 
rolled back in the organized system and proselyting 
zeal of the great heresy of the Manichaeans. 
£i! ia Next to Palestine, Asia Minor had been the elect 

Minor. ' 

field of the early growth of Religion, most of the 
writings of the New Testament being addressed to 
believers in that region ; and it was in one of its 
prifer provinces, Asia Proconsularis or Asia Proper, that 
Catholic Christianity first assumed its type form in 
the mystical seven Churches of the Revelation of 
S. John. It was also the cradle of the most formi- 
dable heresies of the early Church. 10 Among the 

30 Newman's Arians of the Fourth Century. 



as by fire. 



CH. VII.] THE CHURCHES IN GENERAL. 359 

fanatical population of Phrygia, Mont anus was born, Phrygia. 
and after him Novatianus the great Schismatic. In 
other parts, Judaic and Gnostic elements had been 
blended into their most seductive and most per- 
nicious forms; and the contest with these various 
errors had been further complicated by the unhappy 
strife about the Pascha, and by the rationalistic 
views of such men as Praxeas and foetus. From 
these fiery trials the Churches of Asia Minor came saved^ 
out safe in the main, but not without suffering loss 
in more ways than one. In fact, while the Churches 
in this region continued to be among the most popu- 
lous and flourishing in Christendom, yet their long 
and weary struggle seems in some measure to have 
benumbed their strength ; so that, after the first 
glorious era of S. John and his immediate disciples, 
their history is comparatively obscure and unin- 
teresting. 

The whole extent of country was about six hun- Extent 
dred miles in length by three hundred in breadth, country. 
embracing according to the earliest notices some 
three hundred and eighty-eight dioceses, the greater 
part of which,, probably, were established during the 
first three centuries. Of its various provinces the 
majority are alluded to in the New Testament, and 
profited by the labors of the chief Apostles. Bithynia Bithynia. 
seems to merit particular notice as being the scene 
of the persecution mentioned in Pliny's famous letter 
to Trajan, and as being the starting point of the 
last great war against Christianity : Nicomedia, its Nicomedia 
chief city, a place on the Propontis about fifty miles 
east of the present site of Constantinople, having 
been chosen by Diocletian as the imperial abode. 

During the Decian times, Pontus and other parts 



360 



HISTOEY OF THE CHUECH. 



[bk. ni. 



Gothic 
invasion. 



Macedo- 
nia, 
Achaia. 



Dionysius 
of Corinth 
A. D. 176. 



He op- 
poses the 
encratite 
school. 



of Asia Minor were thrown into a state of confusion 
hardly short of anarchy, by the terrible inroads of 
the Goths. Among the Christians, many were forced 
by these barbarians to deny the Faith. On the other 
hand, the Gospel asserted its power ; and the begin- 
nings were seen of that wonderful ordering of Provi- 
dence, by which nations to whom the light had not 
been carried were brought by a secret guidance 
within the sphere of the light, 11 and the way was 
opened for a civilization which (perhaps) the effete 
Roman world was no longer capable of receiving. 

Passing from Asia Minor into the European pro- 
vinces, there is little of any special interest in the 
annals of the Churches of Macedonia and Achaia; 
and still less in what was becoming slowly a part of 
Christendom, the region that extends from Constan- 
tinople to Sardica, and from the JEgean Sea to the 
Danube. Corinth, which kept its place at the head 
of the Churches of Achaia, was adorned in the second 
century by the pastoral labors of Dionysius, one of 
the wisest of Church teachers, whose writings are 
admirably but too briefly summed up in the History 
of Eusebius. 12 He opposed the early inroads of the 
encratite spirit. Writing to Pinytus the Bishop of 
the Church of the Gnossians, he exhorted him not to 
impose iijpon the brethren a burden in regard to 
purity too great for their strength, but to have con- 
sideration for human infirmity. To which Pinytus 
answered, with the usual self-complacency of his 
austere school, that men should be fed with strong 
meat, milk being fit only for babes. The substitu- 



Sozomen, ii. 6. 

Euseb. iv. 23. See alsoEoutli, Reliqu. Sacr. vol. i. 



I 



GB. VII.] THE CHURCHES IN GENERAL. 361 

tion of cant for sober and good sense is an expedient 
not peculiar to modern times. It has been in all 
ages the bane of true religion. Another evil is 
alluded to by Dionysius in the curious fact, that 
even before his death his own writings had become 
interpolated and corrupted. Those who had a crav- 
ing for "strong meat" mixed the "milk" of older 
and wiser teachers with stimulating elements of their 
own, to render it more palatable. Several other 
matters of interest were discussed by the same 
Dionysius. 

In the regions of Macedonia and Achaia, with Crete Dioceses, 
and some other islands, there may have been as many 
as fifty dioceses at the end of the third century. 

We pass on to Italy, containing " anciently some of itaiy. 
the smallest and some of the largest dioceses in the 
world, and yet the same species of episcopacy pre- 
served in them all ; the Bishop of Eugubium, as S. 
Jerome words it, being ejusdem meriti and ejusdem 
sac'erdotii — of the same merit and priesthood with the 
Bishop of Rome." 13 In one of the earliest Roman 
Synods on the Paschal controversy, there were but 
fourteen Bishops present — few of the Councils at that 
period being able to muster more. Within a century 
after, Italy could number more than one hundred Sees. 
Dioceses were numerous also in Sicily and other isl- 
ands of the Western Mediterranean. 

The Church of Spain gloried in S. James the Greater Spain, 
as its Apostolic founder : 14 a story full of difficulties, 

13 Bingham, ix.v. 16. TheBish- "The preaching of that blessed 
ops of Italy and the isles adjacent Apostle in Spain was confirmed 
are all enumerated in Italia Sacra,, by the decision of the Roman 
etc., and. D. Ferdinand. Ughello Church . . . but though it was 
Florentin. Venetiis, 1717. even mentioned in the Breviary 

14 Ferreras argues stoutly for it: by the order of the blessed Pope 

16 



362 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. IH. 

which the testimony of zealous but modern Spanish 
writers cannot remove. However this may be, we 
find it a flourishing part of Christendom in the times 
of S. Cyprian. At the end of the third century it 
stands out, in its austere Council of Elvira, as infect- 
ed more or less with the taint of JNovatianism. 

Gaui. The Greco-Gallic foundation in Lyons and Yienne 

suffered terribly in the fifth and sixth persecutions. 
The Church survived these storms, however ; and 
about the middle of the third century its growth re- 
ceived a new impulse from the mission of seven Bish- 
ops (according to Gregory of Tours), 15 who established 
themselves respectively in Paris, Aries, Toulouse and 
other central places. One of the seven, Dionysius of 
Paris, was confounded by subsequent tradition with 
Dionysius the Areopagite, converted by S. Paul. The 
great Council held in Aries at the close of this period 
is a satisfactory proof of the thriving condition of the 
Gallican Church. About the same time we find proof 

The Rhine. f i\ ie existence of Bishops on the Rhine and in Yin- 
delicia. 16 

Britain. ^he Gospel preached in Britain during the Apos- 
tolic times, and probably by S. Paul or some of his 
companions, 17 must have lingered in the island ; for in 
the days of Eleutherus the Poman Bishop, Lucius, a 

Pius V., Cardinal Baronius denied ing examination usually given in 

it in the 10th vol. of his Annals, such cases by the Holy See, the 

His captious reasoning caused Cle- judgment was reversed, and by 

ment VIII. to have it taken out order of Urban VIII. the preaeh- 

of the Breviary. Nevertheless, ing of the holy Apostle in Spain 

when a great number of writers was reinserted among the lessons 

had demonstrated the fallacy of of the Breviary." Hint. Gen. d' Es- 

Baronius, and when the Spanish pagne : Ferreras — D'Hermilly. 
nation and its Catholic kings had 15 See Gieseler, § 57, n. 2. Gal- 

made a solemn protest against that lia Christian. Pariss. 1716. 
reform, the matter was reopened ; ""' Gieseler, § 57, nn. 3, 5. 
and after th,e mature and search- w Stillingfieet, Orig. Britan. 



CH. TIT.] THE CHURCHES IN GENERAL. 363 

petty prince, sent an embassage to Rome in quest of P™ce 
Christian preachers. 18 In the spread of truth, the sup- 
ply always in a measure precedes the demand. It is 
probable, therefore, that there was within the island 
of Britain knowledge enough of Christianity to pro- 
duce among the wiser princes a wish for more. Eleu- 
therits granted the request ; and at the end of this era 
the blood of several martyrs in the Tenth Persecution, 
and the presence of three Bishops at the Council of 
Aries, witnessed the success of their evangelic labors. 

Thus a belt around the Mediterranean Sea, averag- summary, 
ing some two hundred miles in breadth, and occupied 
by the most vigorous and enlightened nations of the 
old Roman world, was the field of the first struggle 
and the first victory of the Gospel. But in reference 
to this region and this period it may be said most 
truly, that the Kingdom of God came not with obser- 
vation. It was for the most part a silent and unre- 
corded growth. So uncertain are the materials for 
forming a correct judgment of its extent in reference 
to the entire population, and so contradictory in some 
respects are the data usually appealed to, that from 
one point of view the lowest estimates may appear too 
high, 19 while from another the most liberal calculation 
seems hardly to give room for all the requirements of 
the problem. In such a case, the middle ground as- 
sumed by most modern writers has little more to com- 
mend it than either of the two extremes. 

18 Bede, Eecl. Hist ch. iv. Stil- 19 In this question, much de- 

lingfieet combats this tradition (as pends on the force we allow to 

it seems to me) on very narrow rhetorical expressions of some of 

grounds. In Britain, as in Gaul, the Fathers. Where statistics are 

there may easily have been sev- concerned, rhetoric, as a general 

era! successive foundations. rule, is extremely unreliable. 



364 HISTOEY OF THE CHURCH. [BK. in. 



CHAPTEE Ym. 

CHURCH GROWTH AJSTD LIFE. 

Gaiiienus, On the death of Yalerian, the Church had rest 
from persecution for a period of forty years. Gai- 
iienus acknowledged it as a religio licita — a sect en- 
titled to legal toleration. That this, however, was 
not an absolute security against heathen violence, 
was shown in the case of one Marinus in Palestine, 
who being a prominent candidate for the office of 
centurion in the* army, was accused for his Christian 
faith by the opposite party, and was on that account 
cast into prison and beheaded. The reign of Clau- 

Aureiian, dius and the first four years of Aurelian were still 

A. d. 270. l Ai • • 

more iavorable to the Christian cause : and though 
an edict of persecution put forth by the latter in the 
fifth year of his reign created a momentary panic, 
yet, its execution being arrested by the sudden death 
of the Emperor, the rest of the century, including 

Diocletian, the greater part of the reign of Diocletian, was a 
season of unwonted peace. 

Progress But with every lull in the storm of persecution, 

Gospel, the quiet but broad and steady progress of Christian- 
ity became more apparent. The time had gone by 
when its influence could be confined to the bosoms 
of the devoted few. Its doctrine, more diffusive 
than its discipline, had penetrated the palace, the 

among aii senate, the camp, every place in fact but the theatres 
and temples ; had gone beyond the borders of the 



CH. VIII.] CHURCH GROWTH AND LIFE. 365 

Roman Empire; and was becoming so entwined 
with men's interests and affections, that society 
could no longer strike it without inflicting wounds 
more or less serious upon itself. 

Had this growth of the Church been tenfold more Growth 

& of the 

rapid than it was, it would have been vastly more church 

*■ ' slow. 

easy to account for on philosophic principles ; his- 
tory supplying instances enough of sects overrunning 
large portions of the earth, and gaining a dominant 
power, in the space of one or two generations. Thus 
Mohammedanism, for example, — a great martial im- 
pulse among a people intensely martial, — swept on 
to a victorious position upon the swell of a single 
tide. But the Gospel could boast of no such sudden, 
uninterrupted and overwhelming triumphs. To win 
the first and lowest stage of the promised victory ; Her serv- 
to rise from a position of social degradation to one an 
of ordinary security for life and limb ; required ten 
generations of obscure and persevering struggle. 
Only here and there, during all this period, did the 
Church ever appear in other than the servant form. 
The world the meanwhile was continually agitated : 
nation rising against nation, and kingdom against 
kingdom ; dynasties passing away, philosophies and 
religions changing, the Empire becoming more and 
more a sort of chronic revolution. Yet amid all the 
opportunities thus recurring, Christians alone never 
struck a blow. During a period in which millions Her 
of lives were lost in religious insurrections, the Church waiting, 
alone never for a moment raised the standard of re- 
volt or change. The great Conspiracy alone, — Un- 
as such the heathen regarded it, — never conspired, 
never rebelled ; never threw the weight of a feather 
into the scale by which political destiny was decided. 



366 HISTOEY OF THE CHURCH. [BK. III. 

The Now a faith "which, could survive so long a period 

problem # o i 

without of depression is without parallel in the history of 

precedent. x . A . ^ 

successtul rengious movements : it makes the prob- 
lem of the Church's triumph so unprecedented, that 
to attempt to explain it on ordinary principles is 
simply to ignore what the nature of the problem is. 
Gibbon's Accordingly, of the five chief causes assigned by a 
causes, celebrated historian, 1 not one is in any way peculiar 
to the Church. They are equally applicable to one 
or other of the heresies with which she had to con- 
tend. In zealous abhorrence of idolatry ; in confi- 
dent expectation of a Judgment and Millennium ; in 
the profession of miraculous endowments ; in ascetic 
and enthusiastic virtues ; and finally, in a polity 
popular, flexible and stable in its character, the 
system of Montanus had a perceptible advantage: 
besides all which, being later on the ground, and 
starting free from the encumbrance of Judaic ante- 
cedents, it was in a position to avail itself of the 
experience and to profit by the errors of its hated 
rival. If such causes, therefore, are to be deemed 
sufficient, Montanism ought to have become the 
dominant religion. 
^ t c her Another glaring fallacy of the same historian is, 
that, while he takes delight in exposing the folly, 
inconsistency and extravagance of the primitive be- 
lievers, and proves incidentally that all these things 
were scandals to the heathen, he yet manages to di- 
vert them from their true bearing upon the question 
of the Church's growth. Now victories, of course, 
may sometimes be achieved in despite of weakness. 
It is obvious, however, that in proportion to the 

1 Hist, of the Decline and Fall Gibbon, Esq., with notes by the 
of the Roman Empire, by Edward Rev. H. H. Milman, etc., chap, xvi 



CH. Vm.] CHURCH GROWTH AND LIFE. 367 

amount of weakness proved against a conquering 
system, the difficulty increases of accounting philo- 
sophically for the prosperity of that system ; and the 
necessity of discovering an extraordinary cause be- 
comes more apparent. A heavy drag upon a ship 
is a sufficient reason to assign for the slowness of her 
progress ; but to speak of such a thing as if it 
helped in any way to account for her progress, is- as 
contrary to philosophy as to common sense. 

But in this respect, the unfriendly hand which ^ e d n / th 
has done so much towards exposing the failings and Jjjj^yj 
infirmities of the first ages of believers, has rendered 
a real service to the cause of Truth. Ko one has 
done more than the philosophic historian of the 
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, to show 
that Christianity had not an easy triumph. Its pro- 
gress was slow: which gave abundant opportunity 
for zeal to flag, and for opposition to rally. The 

contest was not in a corner, or among half-civilized victory 

. i p not easy- 

races of inferior type: it was m the centre of aes- 
thetic, scientific, and philosophic culture. The pre- 
judices to be overcome were not those of superstition 
merely : they were domestic, political, national, re- 
ligious ; interwoven into every thread of that great 
social web which human wisdom in its perfection 
had been for so many centuries engaged in weaving. 
The resistance, consequently, was not a mere fitful 
gust : it was the stubborn opposition of an intelligent, 
deep-rooted, and uncompromising hatred. All this 
appears, unintentionally perhaps, but in colors as 
true as they are vivid, in the remarkable picture 
drawn by the skeptical historian. A believer is 
under no necessity to impugn the substantial accu- 
racy of the portrait. God manifest in flesh — a 



I. 

Truth 
and 



368 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. m. 

strength strength divine made perfect in human weakness — 

in weak- . ° $ . . -i i . 

ness. is as prominent m the history as m the doctrine of 
the Church. The infidel delights in the exposure of 
that weakness ; the believer prefers to contemplate 
that strength : to appreciate fully the great problem 
of Church history, it is needful to look at both, and, 
whatever facts may be found to illustrate either, to 
admit them in a candid though reverential spirit. 

Considered in its first and simplest aspect, the con- 
flict of early Christianity was an intellectual battle 

error, betwixt Truth and Error. It was the sublime the- 
ology of the Gospel opposed to a system of super- 
stitions which had lost what hold they ever had 
upon reason and conscience, and were cherished 
only as they ministered to pride and lust, or at best 
to conventional, social or patriotic feelings. 

The apoio- Of this essential weakness of the opposing side the 

sophist. Apologist was not slow to avail himself. Heathen 
superstitions, in all their littleness and vileness, were 
held up to scorn as well as to merited reprobation. 
But weapons of ridicule were available on either 
side. The doctrine of the Cross was literally a folly 
to the Greeks ; while to the supercilious and worldly- 
minded Roman it appeared as a baleful and ex- 
travagant superstition. When a Celsus, 2 therefore, 
armed with the light weapons of an Epicurean indif- 

weapons fereiice, gave loose rein to the spirit of mockery and 
"profanity, ridiculing the Birth, the Death, the Re- 
surrection or the Miracles recorded in the Gospels, 
he found no lack of hearers and admirers. More- 

2 Origen against Celsus pre- ed. For an account of the writers 

seizes several specimens of his against Christianity, see Fabricii 

style. In Minucius Felix the Salutaris Lux Evangclii, etc., 

Roman spirit is better represent- cap. viii. 



CH. Vm.] CHURCH GROWTH AND LIFE. 369 

over, what could not be proven against the Truth 
was easily asserted. The follies and enormities of 
certain Gnostic sects afforded a handle against the 
body whose name they assumed; and the heathen 
mind, from long familiarity with religion as a cloak 
for vice, could not only impute crimes seemingly in- 
credible, but could give ready faith to the monstrous 
imputation. 

And even in the nobler phases of that long-con- wisdom 
tinned struggle, when Christianity appeared on the Som. 
positive side and presented herself in her sublime 
theology or pure morality, she was plausibly con- 
fronted by appeals to the older system of the He- 
brews, or to a philosophy which chameleon-like 
could assume the very color of the faith it labored 
to destroy. Such was the policy of the JSTeo-Platonic 
and other syncretistic schools. 3 A Plotinus or a 
Porphyry could adorn Platonism before the mirror 
of the Gospel, and then accuse the Gospel of borrow- 
ing from Platonism. Christianity, in fact, had J h e e ti J^" 
much in common with all systems of philosophy and schools, 
religion. She availed herself readily of whatsoever 
things were true, honest, pure, lovely and of good 
report in the learning of the times. When the vo- 
taries of human wisdom, therefore, pointed to what 
was " good and fair" in the lore of the ancient world, 
and said to the Church, as Israel said to Judah in 
their strife for the person of David, " We have ten 
parts in the king and more right than you," it was 

3 The Dialogue of Minucius does full justice to the heathen 

Felix, though it gives the victory side. A like remark applies to 

to the right side of course, does Justin's dialogue with Trypho, 

not make the victory too easy by and to Origen's quotations from 

putting only feeble arguments in Celsus. 
the mouth of the adversary. It 
16* 



370 



HISTOKY OF THE CHURCH. 



[bk. m. 



Truth. 



II. 

Witness 

UNTO 
BLOOD. 



not easy to convince them that the one part of Ju- 
dah, being the head and life, was of infinitely more 
importance than the other parts together. The vic- 
tory, in short, seemed to hang long in even balance. 
For it was not a simple contest between Truth and a 
sheer Lie. The Lie came to the battle armed in the 
attributes of Truth. The rods of the magicians 
could assume the shape and semblance of the Law- 
giver's rod. If the latter at length proved superior, 

vitality of it was owing in the main to its greater vitality and 
endurance. The rod of Moses conquered by swal- 
lowing the other rods. 

Where the Apologist was deficient, the Martyr by 
his simple witness unto death was somewhat more 
successful. Yet even here the cause of Truth had a 
heavy drag upon it. To a sober and philosophic 
Pliny, or to the acrid genius of the great historian 
of the first Csesars, martyrdom seemed little else 
than a headstrong and penible absurdity. 4 The 
witty Lucian could discern nothing in it but food for 
laughter. 5 And the confessors themselves, as we 
have seen often enough in the course of early 
Church history, were not always an ornament to 
their glorious vocation. It was, therefore, only by 
little and little that the seed* sown in blood took root 
and grew : only by oft-repeated mowings that the 
thin grass thickened into a solid sward. It was not 

Martyrs, by martyrdoms, in* short, for Error has its martyrs 
as well as Truth : but by ten generations of continu- 
ous martyrdom — the witness unto death being but 
the pledge of a life-long universal witness under 
social and political annoyances of every possible 



" Inflexibilis obstinatio.' 



5 Be morte Peregr 



CH. VIII.] CHURCH GROWTH AND LIFE. 371 

description — that the Church was enabled to prove 
herself in earnest ; to purge society of that fearful 
frivolity wherein after all the strength of heathen- 
ism lay; and to outlive, if not to overcome, the 
power of misrepresentation. 

The Church's pride in her martyrs proved also a Foines 
source of weakness, by opening the way to a sort of scandals, 
hero-worship ; these worthies being regarded as im- 
mediately exalted to a share of the reign and judg- 
ment-seat of Christ. 6 Hence a fondness for relics. 
Hence a dangerous predilection for cemeteries as 
places of worship. Follies of this sort were more or 
less rebuked, and were not so bad as in later times. 
They were patent enough, however, to provoke the 
ridicule of the heathen, and to turn the edge of the 
Christian argument against polytheism and idolatry. 
What troubles were occasioned by the popular rev- 
erence for confessors, has been sufficiently noticed in 
previous chapters of this Book. 

The spread of the Gospel continued to be accom-.m. 
panied more or less with faith in the assistance of wonders? 
supernatural powers. Of miracles, indeed, in the 
strict sense of the word, 7 there are few instances re- 

6 The popular belief that Mar- condition, on which the interces- 

tyrs went at once to Heaven sions of the martyrs should be 

tended to something like worship found available : " For the peni- 

of them as intercessors with God. tent, for the diligent, for the 

S. Cyprian endeavors at least to prayerful, He can graciously make 

put off this deification of them: acceptable what the martyrs 

" We believe indeed that the have asked and what the priests 

merits of the martyrs and the have done." Be Lapsis, 17, 36. 

good works of the righteous See Tertull. de Pudicit. 22 ; and 

avail much with the Judge ; but Dionysius of Alexandria apud Eu- 

vhi n the day of Judgment cornea, seb. vi. 42. 

when after the end of this world 7 Miracles, that is, which, the 

the people of Christ shall stand facts being admitted, must be as- 

before His tribunal." In the cribed immediately to the Power 

same way, he insists upon the of God. See, on this subject, 



372 



HISTOEY OF THE CHURCH. 



[be. m. 



Charisms 
tempo- 
rary. 



corded, and those not attested by eye-witnesses of 
the facts. Justin Martyr, one of the earliest of the 
Apologists, is chary in his appeals to evidences of 
that kind; and though supernatural gifts are men- 
tioned both by him and by Irenseus and Tertullian 
as still subsisting in the Church, yet the instances 
alleged, — the healing of the sick, 8 the cure of the bite 
of serpents and the exorcising of demons, — belong to a 
class of wonders which, without a minute knowledge 
of all the circumstances, or without the corroborat- 
ing evidence of signs less equivocal, no one feels 
constrained to receive as divine acts. The charisms 
ceased gradually as the need of them ceased. 9 They 
pertained to the first planting rather than to the 
growth of the Church. So far as the like of them 
occurred in later times, they seem to belong to that 
lower class of wonders, in which faith operates 
through 10 and not over or against the mysterious en- 
ergies of nature. 

But for this latter class of wonders there may 
have been a real need in the age now under review. 
Each era of the world has its own spiritual and in- 



Douglas's Criterion, Farmer on 
Miracles, Kaye's Tertullian and 
Justin. Martyr, and Middleton's 
Free Enquiry. 

B The raising- of the dead men- 
tioned by Irenreus, is expressly 
distinguished by him from the 
miracles of our Lord. Euseb. v. 
10. 

9 " Not even in the earliest ages 
of the Scripture history are mir- 
acles wrought at random .... 
nor are they strown confusedly 
over the face of the history, be- 
ing with few exceptions reducible 
to three eras: the formation of 



the Hebrew Church and polity, 
the reformation in the times of 
the idolatrous kings of Israel, and 
the promulgation of the Gospel 
Let it be observed, moreover, 
that the power of working them, 
instead of being assumed by any 
classes of men indiscriminately, 
is described as a prerogative of 
the occasional prophets, to the ex- 
clusion of the kings and priests." 
Newman's Apollonius of Tyana. 

J0 See explanation of the cures 
wrought at the tomb of the Abbe 
Parish and other like cases, in 
Douglas's Criterion. 



CH. VIII.] CHUECH GEOWTH AND LIFE. 373 

tellectnai wants ; and a faith which aims to be use- 
ful, instinctively addresses itself to those wants, as 
commonly understood at the time. Now the world 
in which the early Christians moved, was one that 
believed in the reality of demoniacal possessions. The . . 

<J J- magician 

Hence a universal faith in niagic and divination, and the 

<-> t exorcist. 

Christians were on a level with their age in point of 
scientific knowledge. As to the agency of demons, 
they knew as much, or as little, as the world around 
them knew. But they were superior to their age in 
believing that the powers at which heathenism 
trembled had been brought into subjection by the 
virtue of the Cross, and in the holy Name of Jesus 
might be effectually vanquished. Hence the direc- 
tion that faith instinctively assumed. The Exorcist 
kept his place in the Church, 11 when prophecy, mir- 
acles and tongues had ceased. Without pretending 
to be wiser than the science of the day with regard 
to the mysterious border-land 12 of the natural and 
supernatural, Eeligion felt itself to be more power- 
ful than science. Heathenism was confronted in its 
strongholds of magical pretensions. The demons 
that philosophers invoked, and before which philoso- 
phers trembled, 13 believers set at nought and put un- 

11 But when the Council of tributes all wonders of every 
Laodicea decreed (can. 26) that kind to mere jugglery: a very 
no one should exorcise, either in lame philosophy to any one who 
public or in private, unless or- believes that there is such a 
dalned by a Bishop, the belief in thing as a soul. See Dodw. Diss. 
exorcism as " a gift" was mani- Cypr. iv. 

festly on the wane. This Council 13 Gibbon, with his usual art, 

is variously dated from 314 to represents the philosophers as 

372. resorting to magic, by way of 

12 Middleton, in his Free En- rivalry to Christian exorcism. 
guiry, seems to leave no place for The reverse is certain. Simon 
this middle ground — this terra Magus, Elymas and Apollonius 
incognita of dreams, visions, pre- are types of a class that flourish- 
sentiments and the like — but at- 



374 HISTOEY OF THE CHUECH. [bk. m. 

der a ban. And the result was on the whole favor- 
able to their cause. Whether the wonders wrought 
by the Christian thaumaturge were many or few ; 
whether strictly superhuman, or merely the effect of 
Faith su- an enthusiastic faith working through certain latent 

penor to O o 

science, energies of nature : they were at all events wrought 
in good conscience ; they were confidently appealed 
to ; 14 they had the effect of making Christians supe- 
rior to the fear of the black arts resorted to by ma- 
gicians ; and it was felt among the heathen that 
against a peculiar and mysterious class of evils, to 
which the whole world was held in hopeless subjec- 
tion, the Name of Christ was more powerful than 
any other name. 

Enemies There was a deeper and broader effect from won- 

friends. ders of a more spiritual and less exceptionable kind. 
The conversion of men " from enemies into friends" 
was the glory of the Gospel. These conversions, 
sometimes instantaneous, especially at scenes of mar- 
tyrdom, but more frequently the result of gradual 
conviction, were numerous enough to keep up a 
steady increase of the Church, even in times of dis- 
aster and persecution. On the other hand, while 

weak many fell away from timidity or weakness, few of 
these relapsed into heathenism. They merely bent 
before a storm they were not able to resist. As soon 

ed long- before and long after the a demon. When commanded by- 
Gospel was preached. any Christian to speak, that spirit 
14 Tertullian's challenge (Apo- shall as truly declare itself a de- 
log. 23) can leave no doubt of his mon as elsewhere falsely a god." 
belief in the reality both of de- For references to similar state- 
moniacal possession, and of the ments of Irenaeus, Justin M., Ta- 
power of exorcism : " Let some tian, Origen, Minut. Felix, Cy- 
one be brought forward here at prian, Arnohius, Lactantius, and 
the foot of your judgment-seat, Eusebius, see note to Oxf. Trans- 
who, it is agreed, is possessed of lat. of Tertullian, vol. i. p. 57. 



members. 



CH. Vm.] CHURCH GROWTH AND LIFE. 375 

as the storm passed, these men of little faith return- 
ed ; and there was no ignominy they would not sub- 
mit to, no hardship they would not endure, to win 
their way back to a place among the standing breth- 
ren. 

It was probably the lar^e proportion of timid dis- iv. 

/» -i . i . . -. n Discipline. 

ciples oi this sort that gave so rigid a form to the 
discipline of the early Church. 15 Before the third 
century there was already a catechumenal probation 
of three years preparatory to baptism : a custom for 
which we look in vain for any Apostolic precedent. 
For those who lapsed or fell into open sin, there was 
an exclusion from communion of three or four years ; 
during which term the person doing penance was not 
allowed to enter the body of the Church. In all this 
there was a tendency towards legalism, or towards an 
over-sharp distinction between the " perfect" and the 
imperfect. 16 It may have been, also, that the proba- 
tion before baptism fostered a disposition to defer as 
long as possible the open and full confession of the 
Nanie of Christ. A strict discipline, however, seemed 
necessary for the times. And as the Bishops retained 

15 Tertullian {de Prescript. 41, they would condemn the practice 

42) makes discipline a note of the of Apostolic times: 1 Cor. xiv. 

true Church. To let heathen come 23-25; Acts, xvi. 27-33. 

into their assemblies was to give 16 This distinction the Mani- 

that which is holy to the dogs, to chseans carried out in its utmost 

cast pearls before swine. Heretics rigor: the "hearers" and the 

he represents as perfecting (bap- " perfect" were with them almost 

tizing) catechumens before they different castes. On the subject of 

were taught ; as allowing women Discipline, see Kaye's Tertullian, 

to teach, and even to baptize ; as ch. iv. ; also, Bingham's Antigui- 

admitting novices (persons recent- ties, Marshall's Penitential Disci- 

ly converted) to the Ministry, and pline, Morinus de Disciplina, etc., 

allowing them to continue in secu- Bates's Coll. Lectures on Chr. An- 

lar pursuits, etc. It is easy to see, tiquities, etc. For other writers 

however just his censures maybe on this subject, see Fabricii Lux 

in the main, that in some points Evangel, vs.. 7. 



A tem- 
porary- 
system. 

V. 
Strength 

IN NUM- 
BERS. 



376 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. in. 

in their own hands a power of indulgence or mitiga- 
tion, the evils resulting from it were probably less for a 
while than the power it gave the Church over a loose 
crowd of well-meaning, though feeble and timid mem- 
bers. Whatever its merits may have been, it contin- 
ued in its strictness hardly more than a century. 

The numerical strength of the early Church has 
been so exaggerated by hatred on the one side, and 
by a too sanguine faith on the other, that it seems 
impossible to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion. The 
ancient mind was not arithmetical ; and when it passed 
beyond thousands into the region of myriads, it was 
more apt to fly on the wings of fancy than to keep 
to the foot-pace of prosaic calculation. From such 
statistics as remain, it is probable that in the middle 
of the third century Christians could in few of the 
large cities have counted more than one twentieth of 
the population as on their side. 17 But this twentieth 
part was not a mere crowd, it was a disciplined host. 
It was to be found, moreover, and with the same 
characteristics, in all parts of the Roman world. 
This fact considered, there is enough to account for 
the ingens multitudo of Tacitus, for the partem panne 
majorem of Tertullian, and similar vague expressions 
of other writers, without taking such phrases to the 
letter, or torturing figures of speech into figures of 

17 Gibbon (ch. xv.)makes on the ly accounted for: the rabble and 

whole a fair calculation. For co- the slave population counting- for 

pious reference to passages sug- nought in their estimate of num- 

gesting a higher estimate, see bers. See Milman, book ii.,ch. ix., 

note to Oxford Translation of Ter- note.. The large and (one may say) 

tullian, vol. i. p. 3. From Tertull. absurd calculations formed from 

Apolog. 37, it seems possible that the supposed number of bodies in 

among that select population who the Catacombs have been noticed 

had the right of citizenship, Chris- in chap. iv. of this Book. The rea- 

tians were a majority. If so, the son of heathen exaggeration may 

large expressions both of Chris- be seen in Deut. ii. 25. 
tian and heathen writers are easi- 



I 



CH. VIII.] CHURCH GROWTH AND LIFE. 377 

arithmetic. It is certain that the Christians were far 
less numerous than the heathen. It may be on the 
whole, therefore, more true to say that the power of 
the Church led to an unconscious exaggeration of its 
numbers, than that its numbers in reality increased 
its power. 

A vastly greater influence is to be ascribed to the vi. 

Oatholtp 

Catholicity of the Church, the Unity of the Episco- unity. 
pate, and the way in which, under a popular but 
stable form of government, general and local inter- 
ests had become welded into one. 
The Apostolic episcopate or oversight of the Churches The E P is- 

CODat-6 3. 

was in its essence collegiate : a fact sufficiently mani- college, 
fest in the joint calling, training and commissioning of 
the Twelve, in their joint residence for so long a time 
in Jerusalem, in their subsequent meetings and con- 
ferences, and in the way in which each, after their dis- 
persion, became the nucleus of a new band or college 
of Apostolic fellow-laborers. But the collegiate prin- 
ciple applied to the general interests of the Church. 18 
In matters of local interest each Apostle seems to have 
acted with the utmost freedom and independence. 

At a somewhat later period, when the number of % ™* o 
chief pastors was greatly multiplied, and the limits P ate - 
of jurisdiction proportionally narrowed, there was 
(humanly speaking) a danger of an undue develop- 
ment of the principle of local, diocesan or inde- 
pendent episcopacy. There is something that looks 
like this in the writings of S. Ignatius. 19 A Bishop 

18 This was shown in the ques- mon consent. Hence the Council 

tion of circumcision. S.Paulmig-ht in Acts, x v. 

have settled it by his independent 19 Looks like it, only; for it is 

inspiration ; hut it was thought obviously unfair to construct an 

better that a, matter of common Ignatian theory out of a few obiter 

interest should be settled by com- dicta in one or two Epistles. If, 



378 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. III. 

in his own city-see, supported by his own crown of 
Presbyters, regarding himself as speaking and ruling 
in Christ's stead and responsible for his conduct to 
Christ alone, might easily degenerate into a puny 
lord spiritual, isolated within his own narrow circle, 
and as absolute in pretensions as weak in real power. 
But as heresies increased, the oneness of the Bishop- 
ric showed itself to be the divinely appointed safe- 
guard against this peril. A common cause enforced 

Synods, common counsels. Through Synods holden regularly 
once or twice a year in presence of the whole body 
of the brethren, and through canons requiring at 
least two Bishops to concur in consecrations, 20 the 
Episcopate became established in its proper Apostolic 
form of a collegium: a commonwealth, that is, of 
colleagues or brothers, all supporting a common bur- 
den, and each responsible to all for the portion he 
upheld. 21 

intercom- From this accrued many obvious advantages. 
Though Ecumenical Councils were as yet impracti- 
cable, the Provincial Synods maintained a strict con- 
cert with one another; 22 and the Church Catholic 
was knit together by a living web of intercommunion, 
pervading the remotest quarters of the great Roman 
world. 

however, a theory be thus con- 20 Apostol. Canon i. 
structed and opposed to the Oyp- 21 Episcopatus unus est, cujus 
riavic theory, the contrast is de- a singulis in solidum pars tene- 
cidedly in favor of the latter, tur: S. Cypr. de Unit. EceL 
The Bishop of S. Ignatius (that 22 In these Synods the repre- 
ss, according to certain critics) sentativc idea was prominently 
has very much the air of a spirit- brought out: Concilia ex univer- 
ual autocrat. But the Bishop of sis Ecclesiis, per qua? et altiora 
S. Cyprian is' an officer sternly qua?que in commune tractantur et 
and closely limited from above, ipsa reprezentatio totius nominis 
from below, and in fact from all Christia7ii magna veneratione ce- 
aromid. Dodw. I/invert, vii. lebratur. Tertull. de Jejun. 13. 



mumon. 



CH. VIII.] 



CHURCH GROWTH AND LIFE. 



379 



It was not the least of the advantages of all this, Bishops 

.. 1*111 i i - i mutually 

that it nipped m the bud any tendency that might account- 
exist towards absolutism, on the part of Presbyters 
or of Bishops. 23 However a pastor might feel dis- 
posed to lord it in the circle of his own labors, there 
was a vast body of his peers, by whom on complaint 
from any quarter he could be called to an account. 
One of the highest positions in all Christendom, con- 
joined with powerful court credit, could not save 
Paul of Samosata from trial and deposition ; and it 



23 Thus the attempt of Victor 
and Stephen in Rome was check- 
ed effectually hj Irenams and 
Cyprian. In summing' up his 
statement of the primacy in Rome, 
Dollinger candidly remarks : — 
"But we must confess that the 
power of the Roman pontiff, and 
his relations to the universal 
Church, were not yet fully devel- 
oped. .... It was in the natural 
order of events, that the formation 
of particular Churches should pre- 
cede, and that the connection of 
the hishop with his clergy and 
flock should be firmly established : 
then came the time for the institu- 
tion of the metropolitan authority, 
etc." On which I remark : (1) 
The supreme power in any society 
is always the first to be developed. 
Time merely limits that power 
by developing lower functions, 
with a system of checks and bal- 
ances. Thus Moses and Aaron 
were more distinctly and abso- 
lutely the supreme power in Is- 
rael than any of their successors. 
(2) The " natural order of events" 
in the early Church was first 
Christ the Head, then Apostles 
representing Christ, then great 
metropolitan foundations (Jerusa- 
lem, Cassarea, Antioch, Corinth, 
Ephesus, etc.), tlteu Churches 



everywhere. In other words, it 
was from the head down through 
the members, not up through the 
members to tne head. The high- 
est powers of the Church were 
the first manifested. If, then, a 
papal supremacy was the highest 
power of all, we ought to find it 
most clearly exhibited from the 
first. (3) The arguments for 
Episcopacy and Papacy are essen- 
tially different from one another. 
Episcopacy we see clearly in Cyp- 
rian, Ignatius, James of Jerusa- 
lem, the Apostles; and nowhere 
more clearly than in these last. 
Papacy we see clearly in Gregory 
VII., less clearly in Gregory I., 
less clearly still in Silvester, least 
clearly of all in the first three 
centuries. As it approaches its 
supposed fountain-head, it be- 
comes so dwindled down that 
even Dollinger, in defending it, 
has to call it a primacy — not a 
supremacy. But a primacy dif- 
fers from a supremacy, as the 
power of a constitutional presi- 
dent differs from that of an auto- 
crat or absolute monarch. See 
Mosheim's Commentaries, Cent. ii. 
§ 20-24: (Murdochs Translation). 
On Development, see W. Archer 
Butler's Letters ; also, Brown- 
son's Quarterly (1847-8). 



380 . HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. III. 

was only a timely explanation that saved Dionysius 
of Alexandria. The wholesome working of this sys- 
tem is witnessed by the fact, that while on all other 
subjects men differed and formed sects; while the 
Creed and the Scriptures were exposed to the vio- 
lence 'of controversy ; yet, in the matter of govern- 
Episco- ment there was a wonderful agreement : even the 

pacy urn- ° 

versai. heretics and schismatics, the Montanists, Manichseans, 
Eovatians, Donatists and Meletians had all hierar- 
chies sinfilar in form at least to that of the Catholic 
Church. 

Local While the general government of the Church was 

thus powerfully controlled and self-limited, local 
interests were managed in an equally admirable 
way. That polity, on the whole, has most vital 
force, which within limits of mutual respect allows 
the freest exercise to individual gifts, and employs 
those gifts most largely for the benefit of all. In the 
early Church, the solid and balanced strength of an 
Apostolic Episcopate was the support and guaranty 

Exercise f suc h wholesome liberty. Hence, in Pentecostal 
times, the liveliness with which the charisms were 
exercised in the assemblies of the faithful. 24 Eo ill- 
compacted system could have endured such a strain 
upon it, without falling into disorder. So, in later 
times, the number and activity of the orders of the 
sub-ministry ; 25 the popular influence of the Yirgins 

24 1 Cor. xiv. 26. than " orders" proper. In the 

25 In the Roman Church (a. d. Apostolic canons subdeacons, read- 
250) there were subdeacons, aco- ers and singers are put in the same 
li/fhs, exorcists, readers, janitors, categoiy with laymen, so far as 
(Euseb. vi. 43) ; to which may be discipline is concerned (canon 43). 
added copiatas (who attended to On this subject see Bingham's 
the burial of the dead), catccl/ists, Antiquities, Book iii. See, also, 
and others ; though some of these Constitut. Apostol. ii. 57; viii. 
were "functions" (like the char- 19-26, 28. 

isms of Pentecostal times) rather 



CH. Vin.J CHUECH GROWTH AND LIFE. 381 

and Confessors ; the frequent meetings of the whole Varied 

- 1 - functions. 

body of the People ; the exciting elections of Bishops 
and Presbyters ; the trials of the lapsed or other of- 
fenders, in the presence of a deeply interested crowd, 
half- witnesses, half-judges ; the eager interest, in 
short, that each member of the community took in 
the administration of the discipline, the charities and 
the finances of the Church : all this would have led 
to inextricable confusion and to schisms without end, 
had not a balance-wheel been provided in the consti- The 
tution of an Episcopate, which, being Catholic as wheel? 8 " 
well as local, could concentrate the strength of the 
whole Body upon any particular point. Thus in the 
JSTovatian troubles at Borne, in the sedition of the 
five Presbyters at Carthage, and in the resistance instances, 
made by Paul's party at Antioch after the condem- 
nation of that heretic : Cornelius, Cyprian and Dom- 
nus were sustained by the authority of their col- 
leagues all the world over. On the other hand, 
when the People were the aggrieved party, — as in 
the case of the Churches of Leon and Astorga in 
Spain, — the ready intervention of the Episcopate at 
large neutralized the aggressions of any particular 
prelate, even of the energetic Boman Stephen. . 

A polity so flexible and so strong, so popular in vn. 
its action and yet so conservative in its basis, was life. 
doubtless an element both of growth and of solid in- 
fluence to the Church. Another influence, closely 
akin to this, is the power of Christian life ; a subject 
already anticipated in part, but meriting in some 
particulars a more exact consideration. 

In the servant stage of her pilgrimage, in times of J?° s mestic 
persecution, when led as it were into the wilderness loosened, 
and kept apart, the Church had to be in a peculiar 



382 



HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. 



[be:, in. 



The Chris- 
tian ideal 
of home 
not favor- 
able to 
marriage 
while the 
world re- 
mained 
heathen. 



sense " the household of faith :" not the complement 
merely of social and domestic ties, bnt in a very 
large measure the practical substitute for them. The 
first effect of the Gospel was to break up family rela- 
tions. Husband was set against wife, and wife 
against husband ; and a man's worst enemies often 
were those of his own house. Tertullian, indeed, 
paints a glowing picture of that home in which man 
and wife were one in the same faith ; and thereby 
shows incidentally how much Christianity was doing 
to elevate and refine the conjugal relation. 26 But 
the very glow of the picture creates a suspicion that 
fancy furnished some of the brightest colors. It is 
remarkable, also, that children have no place in the 
matrimonial paradise thus depicted. It is still more 
remarkable that the effect of the picture, on the 
whole, is to discourage wedlock rather than promote 
it. The simple truth was, that, living in a world 
each breath of which was pestilential to all but the 
strongest natures, 27 a believer shrank from matrimony 
in proportion as the ideal he had formed of that 
blessed state was drawn from the pure precepts of 
the Gospel ; or, if marriage from any cause seemed 
to be unavoidable, he dreaded at all events the re- 
sponsibility of an increasing family. In a society 
still heathen, with just light enough to show the 
foulness of its enormities, children could seldom be 
regarded as arrows in the strong man's quiver : they 



26 Tertull. ad Uxor. lib. ii. 

27 To appreciate that " present 
distress," which led to an undue 
development of the encratite spirit, 
one must have a notion of the in- 
describable turpitude of heathen 
morals ; but to give an idea of 
this, even under the veil of Latin, 



would render a book unfit to meet 
the eye of the ordinary reader. 
The state of modern heathenism, 
in this respect, is suggested as 
plainly as Christian decency per- 
mits, in the very trust- worthy 
book of Mr. R. B. Minturn, Jr., 
" From New York to Delhi." 



CH. Vm.] CHURCH GROWTH AND LIFE. 383 

were too easily perverted into weapons for his spirit- 
ual foe. 28 To be childless, therefore, or, if the bnrden children 
of offspring were imposed, to see them depart early Sred. e " 
to a safer and better world, was considered by many 
a legitimate desire. There are, nevertheless, many 
blossoms of early piety in the annals of those times. 
Attention was paid, also, to Christian education. 25 
On the whole, however, a genial domestic tone was 
not conspicuous among the graces of the period. 
The pruning of the vine had fallen to the " wild boar 
out of the wood," and the more tender shoots of the 
plant were naturally the first to suffer. 

Under these circumstances, the life of the early The 

' <J Church a 

Christians, — their polity as S. Paul appropriately council, 
terms it, — was public and churchly to an extent in- 
conceivable in our days. To say that believers were 
assiduous in communion or common prayer, *gives 
but a faint notion of the real state of things. The 
ecclesia was, to them, not a mere place of worship : 
it was a synod, a council, an ecclesiastical ex-' 
change ; 50 in short, an assembling of themselves to- 
gether for devotional, social, charitable and business 
purposes. 

In the morning they met, to the great disgust of 

28 " Shall we seek burdens, by the Church, and even jnfant- 
which even the gentiles for the communion. But prudential con- 
most part avoid ? . . . . burdens siderations led many devout per- 
not only troublesome to us, but sons, such as the mother of S. 
perilous to faith — " : Tertull. ad Augustine, to reserve the blessing 
Uxor. i. 5. The frightful amount for later and safer years. Ter- 
of pauperism, with exposure of tullian was a decided advocate of 
infants, prostitution, and other such delay. 

crimes, led many of the Fathers 30 Churches, therefore, were 

to believe that the world was sometimes called Synodi, Con cilia, 

overstocked. See Chattel's Essay Conciliabula, Conventicula. Bing- 

on the Charity of primitive Chris- ham's Antiquities, viii. i. 7. For 

tians. S. Cypr. epistol. ad Deme- the order observed in Church see 

trianum. Apostol. Constitut. ii. 57. 

29 Infant-baptism was favored 



384 



HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. 



[bk. ni. 



mtes and the heathen, for the " daily bread ;" and as they 
went forth from these antelucan meetings, they were 
known to be Christians by the smell upon their 
breath of the merum matutinum.^ The sacrament 
was still a communion in the strict sense of the 
word. In the celebration of it there were but few 
departures as yet from Apostolic simplicity. Tertul- 
lian notices, 32 as customs resting on tradition, that it 
was received before day-break, from the hands of 
the Bishop only, and with great care not to spill the 
wine or to drop any particle of the bread. More- 
over, on one day every year, oblations were made 
for the dead in commemoration of their birth-day : 
that is, of their entrance into everlasting life. 33 The 
consecrated elements were carried to the sick by 
deacons. Communicants sometimes took with them 
. a portion of the bread, and tasted it before each 
meal. The Eucharist was usually celebrated in 
Church : it was not as yet forbidden, however, to 

customs, fcelebrate it in prison, or in other unconsecrated 
places. It is probable enough, that by the end of 
the third century it was accompanied with an in- 
crease of ceremonial. The sacrament of Baptism 



31 The daily Eucharist seems to 
have been the custom of Rome, 
Carthage, and some other places : 
see Bingham, xv. ix. 4 ; also, S. 
Cyprian de Camd Dom. The 
weekly Eucharist was probably 
the general rule. 

32 TertuIL de Coron. iii. ; see 
notes to the Oxford Translation. 

33 The names of the departed 
were inscribed upon writing- 
tables called diptychs, and after 
being commemorated, were erased 
to make room for others. The 
offerings made by the friends of 



the departed contributed to sup- 
port the charities of the Church. 
The prayers offered pro dormi- 
tione were founded on the prin- 
ciple announced by S. Cyprian: 
" Let us always be mindful of one 
another .... and pray for one 
another wherever we may be .... 
and whichever of us shall be per- 
mitted to be soonest with the 
Lord, let his love for all endure, 
and let him entreat the Lord's 
mercy without ceasing for his 
brothers and sisters." Ep. lvii. 
ad Conieliuin. 



CH. VEEI.] CHURCH GROWTH AXD LIFE. 385 

had already admitted many additional observances. 
Previous fasting, exorcism, renunciation, miction, 
trine immersion, recital of the Creed, use of spon- 
sors, and after the day of baptism a week's absti- 
nence from daily washing, are among the peculiari- 
ties mentioned by early writers. The worship of the 
Lord's Day was signalized by standing in prayer, 
fasting and kneeling being prohibited. To this it 
may be added, that signing with the cross was prac- 
tised on all occasions. 34 

At night Christians came together in a more soci- ^® 
able way for the Agape, or Love-feast : a sober but 
cheerful repast, which the rich provided, and which 
to many of the poorer brethren must have been the 
principal meal of the day. 35 These feasts already in 
the third century were becoming more luxurious 
and less religious than was consistent with good 
order, or even with good morals. 36 It would seem, its abuse, 
however, that such misuse was only occasional, and 
was connected with mortuary repasts, rather than 
with the love-feasts proper. Indeed, many kinds of 
night-meetings were customary among Christians : 
which gave occasion of scandal to the heathen, and 
could hardly fail to be attended more or less with 
disorders and abuses. 37 

34 Tertull. de Cor. iii. 36 The earliest canonical notice 

35 « Q ur f eas £ showeth its na- of abuses in the love-feasts seems 
ture in its very name. It is to have been in the Council of 
named by the word which in Laodicea : can. 27, 28. 

Greek stands for love. ... If we 3T Hence, can. 3o of Elvira : 

aid every poor man by this re- "Women are forbidden to keep 

freshment, it is not to enslave vigils in cemeteries, lest under 

their liberty, not to fill their bel- the pretext of devotion crimes 

lies at the expense of their self- be perpetrated." The passion 

respect, but to be like God, tak- for stimulating services in ceme- 

ing special thought for men of teries and over the martyria 

low degree." Tertull. Apolog. 39. seems to have led off believers to 
17 



386 HISTORY OF THE CHUECH. [bk. HI. 

There was enough, in the vicissitudes and perils of 
the times to give a peculiar zest to these frequent 

fm^ath meetings. Through that wonderful network of fra- 
ternal sympathy, the Communion of Saints, no part 
of the Body could suffer without all feeling with it. 38 
A brother, for example, after a long journey from 
Antioch or Jerusalem, having saluted all the sister 
Churches by the way, arrives in Rome, bearing cre- 
dentials from his Bishop. Perhaps he has with him 
a handkerchief or a garment, stained with the sacred 
blood of some recent martyrdom. He is hospitably 
received. The first brother he meets is glad to en- 

Hospitai- tertain him. His feet being washed and his wants 
attended to by the sister and conserva, the devout 
wife of his host, in the evening he is presented at 
the Agape; and the brethren all salute him with 
"the kiss of peace." It is needless to go into the 
particulars of such scenes. To any one who has 
studied the heart of the old classic world, so child- 
like and so strong amid its manifold corruptions, it 
is easy to see that the non-resistance to evil inculca- 
ted in the Ecclesia, and so miraculously maintained 
for three hundred years, was no stagnation in the 
flow of earnest life, but rather the token of a mys- 
terious and divine controlling power. 

Heathen But a heathen, to whom not a syllable was breathed 
of the nature of this politeia, except as he could ex- 
tort a half-confession from a reluctant wife or a stam- 
mering slave, and who knew nothing of the control- 

the meetings of heretics. Concil. of Christianity : " It is incredible 

Laodic. can. 9. to see the ardor with which that 

38 " Communicatio pacis, appel- people help one another in their 

latio fraternitatis, contesseratio wants. They spare nothing. Their 

hospitalitatis :" Tertull. de Prce- first legislator has put into their 

script. 20. Even the scoffing Lu- heads that they are all brethren." 
cian was struck with this feature 



calumnies. 



CH. Till.] CHUKCH GROWTH AND LIFE. 08 7 

ling influence of the Sermon on the Mount, would 
naturally regard it all as a sort of permanent con- 
spiracy. It was to be expected that such an one 
should curl his lip with scorn, as he spoke of Chris- 
tian love ; 39 that the opprobrious word stupra should 
be associated in his mind with the antelucan Feast ; 
that his abhorrence should find vent in caricatures, 
some of which, in all their fearful blackness of 
mingled calumny and profanity, are still occasion- 
ally exhumed amid the living death of Pompeii ; 40 
that he should regard the Church, in short, as a 
slumbering volcano, the outbreak of which might 
at any moment involve the whole social fabric in 
ruins. 

And this, indeed, was the wonder of early Christian Jiameiesl 
life : a stumbling-stone to many, yet to others a means 
of irresistible conviction. The life of the Ecclesia, so 
mysterious, so hated, so suspected, was accompanied in 
the case of individual believers with a daily walk, quiet 
peaceable and self-restrained, in which calumny itself 
found it difficult to detect a serious flaw. A heathen 
husband might, indeed, be vexed at the plain attire 
of his Christian wife ; he might look upon it as an 
unseasonable display of gravity, when she shuddered 
at the profanities of his worldly guests or declined be- 
ing amused at their unseemly jokes : her rising from 
his side at night to utter a prayer ; her visits, if allowed, 
to the night-meetings for devotion or to the hovels of 
the poor for charity ; her taking of a bit of bread re- peculiar- 
served from the matutinal Feast before each meal ; 

39 The famous phrase, " See 40 The Graffiti or wall-scrib- 

how these Christians love one an- blings of Pompeii have shed alight 

other," was sometimes not a com- upon some peculiarities of the 

pliment, but an indecent taunt, early Church. See an Article in 

See Minut. Fel. Octavius. the Edinburgh Review (1859). 



388 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. in. 

her gesture of abhorrence in presence of idol-worship ; 
her frequent use of the sign of the Cross ; these and 
other peculiarities might annoy him not a little, and 
in some of them his superstitious fears might lead him 
to suspect a taint of magic : 41 yet, on the whole, when 
he found that wife to be patient, quiet, helpful — the 
greatest contrast imaginable to the frivolous spouses 
of his neighbors — there would be a strong inducement 
to look more closely into the reality of her religion. 
Their But, on the other hand, the Apologists had to com- 

virtuesnot ' ' ± <-> 

popular, plain that there were husbands, fathers and masters to 
whom wanton wives, profligate sons and eye-serving 
slaves were less offensive, on the whole, than Chris- 
tian inmates in their houses. From causes already 
mentioned, the virtues most apparent among believ- 
ers were those of the extraordinary and heroic type. 
There was little room for the qualities most prized in 
heathen society. Patriotism could not flourish under 
Lack of the frost of continual persecution. Public spirit could 
spirit be hardly more than a name, when to serve the pub- 
lic in any capacity was to be implicated in the sin of 
idol-worship. Military merit was much hindered from 
a similar cause, though the army seems to have been 
regarded with some favor. 42 So with all the amenities 
of social and friendly conviviality ; with the observ- 
ance of holidays, feasts, amusements and public or 
private entertainments. The peculiar charm which 
classic culture had thrown over all the fashions of the 
world, was but the graceful covering of a mass of 

41 Tertullian adllxor. — in which danger to faith and pure morals, 
every word is a window, revealing That Christians were quite numer- 
the secrets of home-life. ous in the army there can be no 

42 Military service was objected question. Tertull. Apolog. 5, 37, 
to by Tertullian, Origen and oth- 42. See note to Oxford Trans, of 
ers ; but chiefly on account of the Tertull. p. 184. 



CH. VIII.] CHURCH GROWTH AND LIFE. 

moral putrefaction. Each flower concealed a serpent. 
Each grace was so entwined with the tendrils of a 
wanton polytheism that, to escape defilement, Chris- 
tians were fain to eschew " the king's meat" and to 
thrive on the " pulse and water" of a bare sufficiency. 
Hence, even the arts were looked upon with suspicion. Aversion 
The painter or sculptor who became a convert to the arts. 
Gospel, did so at the sacrifice of his professional live- 
lihood. By degrees, however, there was a relaxation 
in this respect. The poetry of life, so closely pruned 
for a season, began to bud forth again ; and, amid the 
touching memorials of the saints who slept, the ele- 
ments of an elevated, pure and intensely Christian art 
began to settle upon the Church, as quietly and spon- 
taneously as dew upon the grass. The great-hearted 
jFbssor** could not leave his labor of love, without in- 
scribing upon it some tender symbol, some edifying christian 
parable. The Cross, the Dove, the Lamb, the Good sym ° s * 
Shepherd and, most popular of all, theIchthus 44 orFish, 
the Ark, the Gourd of Jonah, the heaven-sailing Ship, 
the four-headed River of Paradise, the Rock smitten 
by Moses, or even a few heathen images suggested by 
the Sibylline Books, such as Orpheus with his lyre 
charming the beasts, marked the resting-places of 
those who having fallen asleep in peace awaited the 
promised dawn of a joyful Resurrection. 45 But such 

43 The fossores or delvers were 45 The Council of Elvira in 
characters of no little importance Spain (a. d. 805) forbade pictures 
in the Roman Church : seePerret, in Churches, "lest the object of 
Aringbi and others on the Cata- worship should be depicted." It 
comb*. On the general subject, is probable from this that pic- 
see Didron's Christian, Jconogra- tures (as distinguished from mere 
phy. symbols) had begun to be used in 

44 Anagram for IH20Y2 XPI2- Churches; though it was a long 
TOS 0EOT TI02 20THP — time before they came into open 
Jesus Christ Son of God Saviour, and undisputed use, even as orna- 



890 



HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. 



[be. m. 



Senou8 
views of 
'life. 



Charities 



things were luxuries for the Catacombs. In contro- 
versy with the heathen and in the walks of every-day 
life, Christians were rigidly unsesthetic and utilita- 
rian. 46 Fashionable festivity was to them but a ghastly 
grin upon the face of death. It is not to be wondered 
at, therefore, that in the eyes of that numerous class, 
common to all ages, who value present comfort more 
than honesty and truth, believers were looked upon 
as a sunless race, ludfuga natio, hateful to the lares 
and penates of a lively Roman home. 

While nothing was further from the mind of the 
early Christians than communistic notions, 47 yet noth- 
ing was more frequently reported of them, whether 
for censure or for praise, than that "they had all 
things common." The love-feasts, already men- 
tioned, were associated with a well-known maxim 
of our Lord, 48 and gave the rich an opportunity to 
cheer the hard lot of the poor, without injury to the 
sentiment of honest self-respect. " As the elm sup- 
ports the vine, and is beautified by it," so the rich 
were to support the poor in such a way as to cherish 
in them genial and amiable affections. Other objects 
of charity were the confessors in prison ; the desti- 
to widows, tute families of the martyrs ; the care of widows and 



to the 
poor, 



ments. Eusebius speaks of por- 
traits of Christ and the Apostles, 
but as a matter of heathen custom 
only: JSccl. II. vii. 19. 

40 "Flowers were made to smell, 
not to crown dead bodies with," 
a Christian is made to say, in the 
Octavius. Tertullian speaks in 
like manner: deCorov.v. Even 
Clement of Alexandria, who lived 
in a Church community already 
wealthy and luxurious, shows no 
indulgence to the ornaments and 
superfluities of life. See Pckdacjog. 



passim. In the burial of the dead, 
however, cost was not spared. 

47 See the admirable essay of 
the Rev. Stephen Chastel on the 
Charity of the Primitive Churches ; 
translated by G. A. Matile ; also, 
C. Schmidt, Essai historique sur 
la Societe, etc. Paris, 1853; F. de 
Champagny, la Charite Chr&ti- 
enne, etc. Paris, 1854 ; A. Tolle- 
mer, (Euvres de Mis&ricarde, etc. 
Paris, 1853. 

48 S. Luke xiv. 12; compare 
Constitut. Apostol. ii. 28. 



CH. Vm.] CHURCH GROWTH AND LIFE. 891 

orphans, who were placed under the particular orphans, 
charge of the Bishops ; the rearing of children ex- 
posed by their parents ; the rescuing of a few at 
least from that vast flood of uncared-for souls which 
set in towards the brothels, the bridewells, the gal- 
leys, or the schools of the gladiators. Life among 
the ancients was held very cheap : souls still cheaper. 
Cato, a model of domestic virtues, boasted that he 
kept no worn-out slaves. When the Gospel came, 
it partly found and in part created a more humane 
feeling. 49 Still, the abominable treatment of the 
familia by heathen masters, during this period, may 
be inferred from the fact that, horrible as were the 
tortures inflicted upon the Martyrs, they were after 
all but the ordinary punishments of refractory slaves. slayes - 
The eculeus or rack was an almost necessary imple- 
ment in a heathen home. Now the Church, by in- 
culcating a true religious equality of men in all 
conditions, and by putting her anathema upon such 
cruelties, for example, as the selling of slaves to 
gladiatorial schools, did much towards remedying 
the worst and most inveterate evils of the system. 
Indiscriminate manumission she could not encourage : Manumis- 
indeed, she was obliged to forbid it, except where 
there was a reasonable prospect to the freedman of an 
honest livelihood, or where the manumitter engaged 
to be his patron or protector. 50 For it was not the 

49 I do not think it necessary Samaritans, worthy publicans, 

(with Chastel aud others) to as- and benevolent centurions, a 

cribe the humane sentiments of thousand-fold more deserving of 

Seneca, Trajan, Pliny, Antoninus praise than such whited sepul- 

Pius, and other amiable heathens, chres as Cato. If there had been 

to any supposed knowledge of no humane feeling, the humanity 

the Gospel. That old Roman of the Gospel would not have been 

world was human, not diabolic, appreciated. 

As such, it had its share of good 60 Among the Canons bearing 



392 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. III. 

least among the cruelties of the times, that masters 

often freed their servants to escape the burden of 

their support ; thus adding to that rabble of famished 

wolves by which the great-cities were infested. The 

other redemption of captives was another channel of bene- 

f benev- volence. So with the struggle against the famines 

and pestilences, by which the ancient world was so 

frequently desolated. So, again, with the burial 

of the dead; which being sadly neglected by the 

heathen, the Church had to bear more than a double 

burden. 

sources of To meet these and similar claims required, on the 

income 

part of the Church, an almost boundless liberality : 
more especially as the burden was laid exclusively 
upon the faithful. But the supply never failed to 
come. In the language of Clement of Alexandria, 
Charity was not a cistern, but a well: the more it 
was drawn from, the clearer, the sweeter and the 
more abundant its flow. And that it might flow 
freely, all factitious supplies were rigorously re- 
jected. To give, was to communicate with the 
altar : to be at variance with the altar was to lose 
offerings, the privilege of giving. When Marcion the heretic 
was excommunicated, his liberal donations, amount- 
ing to the sum of two hundred thousand Sestertii, 
were cast out with him. 51 In the same way, the 
offerings pro defunctis, namely, the lavish oblations 
prompted by affectionate remembrance of those who 
slept in the Lord, were not accepted, nor was the 
name of the deceased pronounced in the prayer pro 
donnitione which formed part of the Eucharistic 

on the subject are Ap. Can. 82, teresting matter on this point, see 
and Gang-ran. 3. See also Aposloh Chaster' s Charity, etc. 
Constitutions, iv. 9. For much in- 51 Tertull. adv. Marc. iv. 4. 



CH. VIII.] CHURCH GROWTH AND LIFE. 393 

Service, unless he had departed in the peace of 
the Church. 52 The acceptance of the gift was in- 
volved in the accept ableness of the giver. Hence 
not free-will offerings merely, "but the free-will offer- 
ings of an holy worship, were the ordinary sources* of 
revenue. These, given weekly or monthly accord- 
ing to the ability of the giver, 53 were divided into ^L e c e ts 
three portions — one for the clergy, one for Church 
services, one for charities of all other kinds ; and 
were dealt out daily, under the direction of the 
Bishop and Deacons, to these several objects. It 
was one grave charge against the Montanist proph- 
ets, that they accepted salaries, 51 instead of trust- 
ing each day to furnish its own supplies. They 
preferred cistern-water to that which came fresh 
from the spring. But among the Catholics, in 
addition to the amount that flowed in regularly 
from the sources above-mentioned, there were oc- 
casional contributions for particular purposes ; and 
not unfrequently it happened that the old Pente- 
costal ardor broke forth anew, and wealthy converts, 
on entering the Church, or more especially on elec- 
tion into the ministry, put their all into the sacred Free gifts. 
treasury, 55 and were content thenceforward to live 

59 S. Cyprian. Ep. i. Tertull. Euseb. Eccl. Hist. v. 18. The 

de Monogam. 10. followers of Theodotus the By- 

53 In exhorting to liberality, zantine adopted the same custom, 
the Church naturally referred Such a business-like arrangement 
to Pentecostal times, to Jewish offended the religious instinct at 
tithes, first-fruits, etc., for the first, because it looked too much 
measure in which individuals like taking thought for the mor- 
should give. There was no sort of row. Like many other heretical 
compulsion, however; and the cler- inventions, however, it crept into 
gy were not allowed to exact pay the Church, and stayed there, 
for any special religious services. See Miinter. Primord. Eccles. 

54 This seems to be the drift of African, xxii. 7. 

the sharp invectives of Apollonius, 55 Eusebius speaks of this as 

17* 



394 HISTORY OF THE CHUECH. [BK. m. 

of the altar. Thus there was always enough for all 
emergencies. The fountain might now and then 
choke for awhile by the accumulations of worldly 
prosperity ; but when persecution came the obstruc- 
tion rapidly disappeared, and charity flowed freely 
and copiously as before. 
Nearly ^ w ^l ^ e seen > therefore, that even in the point 
church. f liberality, the Primitive Church had a mark of 
distinction from other ages. Whatever she accom- 
plished in that way was done simply in faith, and in 
the Name of Christ. There was little or no help 
from that vague philanthropy which, like the 
promised "signs" 66 of the Gospel, may be said to 
" follow them that believe ;" being, in fact, an 
accompanying power of the Truth, an attendant 
of Christian civilization in general, rather than a 
produci-of personal belief. In the first three cen- 
turies there was no Christendom, no Christian world. 
There was nothing #f that moral atmosphere, warmed 
by the Gospel if not quickened by it, of which a 
far-reaching, enlightened and scientific benevolence, 
— feeding the poor, healing the sick, casting out devils 
from the social system, and doing many wonderful 
and noble works, — is a characteristic feature. The 
opposi- Church and the world then were in deadly antago- 
the world, nism. Christianity was, in fact, the Church in the 

common in the first and second other charities of Christian civil- 
age: iii. 3*7. In after-times, Cy- ization; also, perhaps, in the 
prian and Gregory Thaumaturgus scientific subjection of the ele- 
are well-known examples of the ments of nature : a power by 
same liberality. which Christendom is as far in 
60 Mark, xvi. 17, 18. The pro- advance of heathendom, as the 
mise was fulfilled to the letter in Apostolic Church with her mir- 
Pentecostal times ; in the spirit acles was in advance of the age 
it is fulfilled in the hospitals, in which peregrinabatur — she was 
homes, asylums, universities, and " a pilgrim." 



CH. vm.] CHURCH GROWTH AND LIFE. 395 

wilderness. Every thing around was barren and 
hostile to her; and Charity, to exist, was obliged 
to be armed at all points in the panoply of a 
simple, uncompromising Creed. 

On the whole, the power of Christianity was more ™ t ant 
manifest, during this period, than its softer and mild- 
er traits. It was not a time such as that described 
by the Prophet, when " old men and old women 1 ' 
could " dwell in Jerusalem, every man with his 
staff in his hand for very age ; or when the streets 
of the city" could be " full of boys and girls play- 
ing in the streets thereof." It was an era of Mar- 
tyrs, Confessors, Doctors, Virgins and Anchorets : a 
camp-life, as it were, having a glory and beauty of 
its own ; a sternly militant age, in which a man 
would part with his raiment to purchase him a 
sword, and in which the grace of endurance was 
preferred to virtues more comfortable and ordinarily 
more prized. The perfect fruit of the period, its pe- 
culiar and supernatural grace, was that of non-resist- Non-re- 

. -» T . . sistance. 

ance to oppression. JNor was this virtue a mere 
softness on the part of Christians, — a mere absti- 
nence from riots, insurrections, plots and rebellions. 
It was an armed watch set at the very door of the 
lips. For three hundred years there was a society 
pervading the Roman world, consisting of men of 
every class and condition, and horribly oppressed, 
which, during all that period, did not even talk or 
think resistance. 57 However the yoke might gall 

57 " How often do ye spend chanals, they spare not the Chris- 

your fury on the Christians .... tians even when dead And 

in obedience to the laws ! How yet what retaliation for injury 

often doth the hostile mob attack have ye ever marked in men so 

us ... . with stones and fire ! banded together, so bold in spirit 

With the very phrensy of Bac- even unto death? — though a single 



ance 



396 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bk. III. 

them, they simply waited in quietness and confi- 
dence till the Hand that had put it on them should 
graciously take it off. 
Tottinu- J ^ n( ^- this quiet persistence was undoubtedly the 
secret of their strength. There were, as we have 
seen, corruptions among the early Christians, abuses, 
follies, superstitions. Scandals, perhaps, were almost 
as numerous in proportion to the number of believ- 
ers as in any other age. Yet, on the whole, amid 
changes going on all around, the Church alone stood 
firm and unalterable, witnessing to the same Truth, 
and witnessing in the same way, for three hundred 
years of almost continuous persecution. During all 
that period the Preacher preached, the Apologist 
explained, the Martyr died, the Bishop ruled, the 
Priest ministered, the Deacon gathered the poor, the 
Exorcist banned the demons, the Fossor delved in the 
bowels of the earth : in a word, the Church kept to- 
gether. But the same power which kept the Church 
together kept the Truth together. When the end of 
the first trial came, and the fourth century opened 
upon a day sevenfold more laborious than any that 
had gone before it, it found the mass of the faithful 
through the world still united in one doctrine, one 
discipline, one worship, one spirit : a unity the more 
amazing that it was free and spontaneous, and ac- 

night might ■with a few torches .... For what war would we not 

work out an ample vengeance, if be sufficient and ready .... who 

it were lawful with us that evil so willingly are put to death ? 

should be met by evil We could fight against you even 

Would strength of numbers and unarmed and without rebelling 

forces be wanting to us ? by merely separating from 

We are a people of yesterday : you .... and leaving you to trem- 

yet we have filled your cities, ble at your own desolation .... 

islands, castles, towns, assem- a vacant tenement for unclean 

blies, your very camp, your tribes, spirits." Tertull. Apolog. 37. See 

companies, palace, senate, forum ! also Origen. contra Cels. lib. iii. 



CH. IX.] TIMES OF DIOCLETIAN. 397 

companied with every form of partial inconsistency 
and weakness. Where one martyr had bled two 
hundred years before, there were now hundreds pre- 
pared to bleed for the same testimony. Xow this 
persistency could proceed only from faith. And living 
faith in such a connection is bnt another word for 
life. In a living faith, therefore, not only unparal- 
leled in itself, but exhibited nnder circumstances 
without parallel in the history of mankind, we find 
the secret of the continued existence, growth, and 
triumph of Christianity through the first and critical 
era of its manifestation. 



, CHAPTEE IX. 

TIMES OF DIOCLETIAN. 

The forty years of peace, mentioned in the begin- F °^J of 
ning of the last chapter, contributed not a little to P eace - 
the prosperity of the Church and to its growth in 
point of numbers. Bishops, no longer persecuted, 
began to be treated by all classes with a marked re- 
spect. "Not a few Christians served in the household 
of Diocletian, countenanced by the faith of Prisca 
his wife and Valeria his daughter. There was, in 
fact, no position of trust that was not open to them ; 
the good-will of the princes having gone so far as to 
relieve them from all necessity of conformity to the 
state worship. It naturally followed that converts 
came in by crowds. The old places of worship had 
to be enlarged. JSTew churches, spacious, magnifi- Prosperity 
cent and solid, were erected in all the chief cities, wealth. 



Corrup- 
tion. 



398 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bK. m. 

Sacred vessels of gold and silver, collections of sa- 
cred books, and perhaps treasures of other kinds, be- 
gan to accumulate in sufficient quantity and splendor 
to be a temptation to the eye of the spoiler, and to 
add another to the many causes of persecution that 
still existed, though hidden for the time by a deceit- 
ful show of peace. 

The usual attendants of prosperity were not slow to 
follow. Discipline was relaxed. Worldliness came 
in as a flood. The Episcopate, reverenced by the 
faithful and honored by infidels, presented itself as a 
prize of spiritual ambition. 1 Hence quarrels, in- 
trigues, factions ; all the evils, in short, with which 
the Church was created to contend, and for the war- 
fare with which the long ages of martyrdom and of 
rigorous discipline were a barely sufficient prepara- 
tion. 
two What cause it was that led to a change of policy on 

the part of the Emperors, has been somewhat va- 
riously stated. It is only known that the able and 
prudent Diocletian, having divided the burthen of 
government, first with the rude soldier Maximian, 
whom in reference to his own proud title of Jovius 
he surnamed the Herculius of his administration; 
and afterwards with the two Ccesars, Galerius whom 
he stationed as a bulwark on the banks of the 
Danube, and Constantius similarly set for the de- 
fence of the borders of the Bhine ; and having 
strengthened this quadruple scheme by a skilful in- 
terlacing of matrimonial ties : proceeded with singu- 
lar success to crush the innumerable enemies of the 
empire; and crowned a long series of victories in 

J Euseb. viii. 1. 



and two 
Cassars, 

A. D. 



CH. IX.] 



TIMES OF DIOCLETIAN, 



399 



Britain, Gaul, Africa, on the Rhine, the Danube and 
the Nile, by the extraordinary glory of a triumph, 
over those inveterate rivals of Rome, the defiant and 
for a long course of years indomitable Persians. He 
had thus attained the summit of human glory and 
success. The repose of mind and body for which he a. d. 30s. 
sighed was now fairly within his reach. Under these 
circumstances, some evil genius — most probably Ga- 
lerius, who passed a winter with the Emperor in his * 
palace at Xicomedia just after the Persian war, 2 — sug- 
gested to his mind that one enemy of the empire, Designs 
more obstinate than the Persians, remained not only the 
unconquered, but threatening if not soon checked to 
carry the whole world before it. This enemy was 



2 L. C. F. Lactantii, cle Mortibus 
Peraecutorwm. Lutet. Paris. 1748. 
The spirited narrative of this 
writer is sharply criticized by 
Gibbon and Milman ; though 
neither of them deviate from it 
in any material point, and where 
they do, it is with very little rea- 
son or show of authority. Lac- 
tam ius was probably an African 
by birth, a disciple of Arnobius, 
and an able rhetorician — "the 
Christian Cicero." Invited by 
Diocletian he removed to Kico- 
media some time before the per- 
secution, and remained there pro- 
bably during the ten years. He 
was "intimate with the Christian 
and other members of the im- 
perial household. On the whole, 
he had greater facilities for cor- 
rect information about the events 
he describes than commonly fall 
to the lot of contemporary his- 
torians. Gibbon's objections to 
him, or rather his insinuations, 
are: (1) that he was an obscure 
rhetorician ; i. e,, a man devoted 



to literary labors — an objection 
that would apply to most his- 
torians ; (2) that he wrote to flatter 
the pride of the victorious court — 
to which it is answer enough, that 
his book is dedicated, not to 
princes, but to an humble con- 
fessor ; (8) that he is a passionate 
declaimer—o, remark that applies 
equally to Tacitus, and to all his- 
torians of any feeling who are 
called to describe the deeds of 
tyrants. The objections made to 
the authenticity of this treatise de 
Mortibus Persecutorum, are found- 
ed chiefly on a supposed inferior- 
ity in point of style to the other 
works of Lactantius. On the 
other hand, there are many 
marks of his style ; and the less 
careful polish may be owing 
merely to the fact, that the au- 
thor, when he wrote, was more in 
earnest than in some of his other 
essays. On this and similar 
points, see notes to the Edition 
mentioned above, Le Brun, Du- 
fresnoy and others. 



400 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [BK. m. 

the Church. Particular cases could be mentioned 
of a dangerous fanaticism in this mysterious body. 
A youth in Africa of the name of Maximilian had 
pleaded scruples of conscience against serving in the 
army, and had undergone death rather than consent 
Pretext to serve. Another Christian, Marcellus a Centurion, 

for it. . ' , . 

had on a public holiday suddenly thrown away the 
ensigns of his office, abjured carnal weapons, and re- 
• fused any longer to do the bidding of an idolatrous 
master. He also suffered death rather than submit. 
Could such examples be tolerated by a sovereign who 
had brought all the world to his feet ? Could a sect 
be allowed to nourish and to hold places of high trust 
in the very Palace, which fostered such ridiculous 
and rebellious scruples V Galerius, for his part, had 
christians already answered the question. He had weeded his 
fi^omthe own army of the dangerous sect. So also had Her- 
aimy ' culius, the valiant leader of the West. 4 It only re- 
mained for Jovius, the wise and victorious inspirer 
of their counsels, to complete his great services by a 
triumph which no one before him had been able to 
achieve, and to leave the Empire to his successors a 
united and homogeneous whole, 
special To suor^estions of this kind many particular in-" 

iluences were added. Hierocles 5 the philosophic 
leader of a revived paganism, did what he could for 

3 These instances are taken by there were put to death. The 
Gibbon from the Acta Sincera, story of the Theban legion, which 
Ruinart. In both cases the fear belongs to this period, is not re- 
of idolatry was probably the lated by any contemporary wri- 
cause of the scruple, though a ter. 

feeling against the lawfulness of 5 He wrote against Christianity, 

war was entertained by some and tried to prove that the works 

Christians. of Apollonius of Tyana were su- 

4 Euseb. viii. 4, mentions that perior to those of Christ. He was 
many had to sacrifice or leave the answered by Eusebius and others, 
army ; but only a few here and See Fabric. Lux Evangel, cap. viii. 



motives. 



CH. IX.] TIMES OF DIOCLETIAN. 401 

the cause. So, also, the mother of Galerius, a fanat- 
ical devotee of idols. Finally, the oracle of Apollo 
at Miletus being consulted, the extermination of 
Christianity was declared necessary to appease the 
long offended gods of the Empire. 6 Under such in- 
centives, seconded by the innumerable pleas to which 
the ears of princes are open, Diocletian's hesitancy 
at length gave way : he decided on a general perse- 
cution, and appointed a day for the inauguration of 
a decisive religious war. 

It was the twenty-third of February, the feast of The war 
the Roman god Terminus : a day selected, says Lac- a. d. 303. 
tantius, ut quasi terminus imponeretur hide Religioni. 
A little before the dawn, the Praetorian Prefect with 
a crowd of army and state officers repaired in a 
body to the Church of Nicomedia, — a noble edifice 
which crowned a commanding height in full view of 
the Palace, and in a densely built quarter of the 
city. The doors are forced open. There is an eager 
rush and fruitless search for some visible object of 
worship. The Holy Scriptures are found and com- 
mitted to the flames. A general pillaging ensues. 
Diocletian, who looked on from the Palace, thought 
it imprudent to gratify Galerius with the spectacle 
of a conflagration ; but the Praetorian guards being 
sent, with siege instruments of every description, the 
sacred pile, whose lofty site and solid structure had 
excited the jealous suspicion of the heathen, was in a 
few hours levelled with the ground. 

The example thus set was an index of the. scheme pian pro- 
of the more prudent and perhaps more clement Dio- pose ' 
cletian. To destroy the churches of the Christians, 

6 -The Oracle replied that it certain righteous men." Euseb. 
could not speak, "on account of Vit. Constant, ii. 50, 51. 



402 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bK. in. 

to seize and burn their holy books, to break up their 
Assemblies, and by the strong hand of power to pre- 
vent their ever reuniting, was the plan he seems to 
have proposed to himself. This example was fol- 
lowed even in those parts of the Empire where from 
motives of clemency or secret favor life and liberty 
were respected. 

outlawry. ^ ne next ^ay came tne expected edict from the 
Palace. 7 Christians of every grade were declared 
incapable of any office or public trust ; freemen were 
disfranchised, slaves forbidden to hope for freedom ; 
the courts of law were to be closed against the 
whole body ; and whatever they might suffer, they 
could sue for no redress. When this edict was put 
up, a certain Christian, fired with a zeal more natural 
than evangelical, 8 rushed forward and tore it down. 
" It is a triumph," he exclaimed, " of the Goths and 
Sarmatians!" For this he was put to the torture, 
roasted before a slow fire, and finally thrown into 
the flames ; all which he endured with admirable 
and heroic patience. 

Palace set But severe as this edict was, it fell short of the 
wishes of the pertinacious Cgesar. He continued to 
ply Diocletian with arguments and complaints ; and 
it served to give force to his urgency, that twice 
within the following fortnight the Palace was found 
to be on fire. The first time, according to the ac- 

7 The various edicts of this per- buted by Guizot, and mildly dis- 

secution are found in Euseb. viii. approved by Dean Milman. See 

2, 3, 6, 8, 10 ; and de Martyr, notes to Milman'a Gibbon, chap. 

Palest. 3. Lactant, de Mori. Pers. xvi. Lactantius, it is to be ob- 

1 3 et ss. See Fabric. Lux. Evangel, served, praises only the courage 

cap. xii. of the man who destroyed the 

6 Gibbon's sneers at this and a edict : his act he expressly con- 
few similar cases of natural though demns. Eusebius, however, seems 
intemperate zeal are sharply re- rather to approve it: viii. o. 



on fire. 



CH. IX.] TIMES OF DIOCLETIAN. 403 



Cause 
unknown. 



count of Constantine, 9 it was struck by lightning. 
The act, however, was on both occasions generally 
attributed to an incendiary ; though who the guilty 
party was, no inquiries nor even tortures could dis- 
cover. It was only known, that every body was 
examined except the servants of Galerius. He, how- 
ever, was clamorously indignant ; conducted the in- 
vestigations himself; laid the whole blame to the 
Christians ; and finally left the Palace in well-feigned 
alarm. After his departure no further attempt was 
made. 

Diocletian by such arts was worked into a fury un- cruelties 
worthy of the character for prudence he had hitherto 
maintained. His wife Prisca and his daughter Yaleria 
were forced to sacrifice. The Eunuchs of the Palace, 
among whom Dorotheus, Gorgonius and Peter are 
particularly mentioned by Eusebius, were tortured 
over a slow fire and at length put to death. The 
Christians of Xicomeclia experienced a similar treat- 
ment. Some were gathered in companies, without 
regard to age or sex, and consumed within a ring of 
flames. Others, with heavy stones attached to them, 
were cast into the sea and drowned. To terrify others, 
unheard-of tortures were invented. 10 

Tli ere have been periods in history when Christians, JjjJJkg 
separated from their kind by an unnatural asceticism, {jj^jj* 1, 
in an age of barbarous manners, or amid the madness 
of revolutionary times, have inflicted similar suffer- 
ings upon their fellows. In behalf of such it may be 
pleaded, that they insanely believed themselves to be 

9 Constantine, in his Orat. chap. Christian fanatic had been the 

xxv., mentions the lightning. Lac- culprit, he would hare avowed 

tantius mentions two fires, and at- the deed and gloried in it. 

tributes them both to Galerius. 10 Lactant. de Most. Peru. xv. 

Milman well observes, that if a Euseb. viii. 6. 



404 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [bK. in. 

doing God service. Their cruelty, therefore, maybe set 
down to the hallucinations engendered by a solitary 
life, or to the phrensy of long-continued civil or do- 
No excuse m estic warfare. No such excuse can be made for the 

for them. 

magistrates of Diocletian's day. They were husbands, 
fathers, citizens, men of sagacity and experience, liv- 
ing in an age of domestic tranquillity and security, 
and votaries of a religion which made tolerance its 
boast. When we see such men, therefore, not only 
persecuting a peaceable class of their fellow-creatures, 
but using all the appliances of science to prolong the 
agony and sport to the utmost limits of endur- 
ance, we behold a depth of depravity beyond which, 
it is to be hoped, none deeper can be imagined. If 
any can be found, it is in the unfeeling profanity 
which, in an age still more enlightened and more hu- 
man, can palliate such doings and coldly take part 
with the oppressor against the oppressed. 
General It is beyond the plan of this history to go into the 
particulars of the long and cruel war which for ten 
years was carried on against the unresisting Chris- 
tians. 11 It extended into all the provinces, except the 
Gauls. There Constantius Chlorus complied with the 
wishes of the elder Sovereigns so far as to demolish 
the church-buildings : the true temple, says Lactan- 
tius, he left unmolested. His underlings, it is proba- 
ble, were not in all cases equally forbearing. Britain, 
at this time, received its first baptism in blood : S. 
Alban, two citizens of Chester, and sundry other per- 
sons in other places, having been put to death. 12 In 
the rest of the provinces believers of either sex were 

1] In the 8th book of Eusebius, there are details enough: also in 
and in the work of Lactantius, Ruinart. Acta Sincera. 
18 Rede, Eccl. H. cap. vii. 



account. 



S. Alban 
in Britain. 



CH. IX.] TIMES OF DIOCLETIAN". 405 

burned, drowned or slaughtered, not singly but in 
crowds. The prisons and mines were filled with con- 
fessors. Virgins were ravished or driven to the alter- 
native of suicide. The sacred books and vessels were course 

pursued. 

seized and destroyed : those who refused to give them 
up were put to the torture. Officers were stationed at 
the temples to force the people to sacrifice ; and that * 
no Christian might have a chance of justice, altars 
were set up in the courts and in front of the tribunals, 
so that the judges could not be approached without 
offering to idols. 

Of the number that suffered it is difficult to obtain SSSySL°* 
a satisfactory account. Basing the calculation upon 
nine Episcopal Martyrs particularly mentioned by Eu- 
sebius, and upon the ninety-two Martyrs of Palestine 
commemorated by the same writer, Gibbon would re- 
duce the whole number to about two thousand persons. 
But Eusebius does not profess to give more than a list 
of those cases which were known to himself or were 
particularly edifying. Of the hundreds who were 
barbarously mutilated and condemned to a lingering 
death in prison or in the mines, he makes only a pass- 
ing mention. 13 He also avoids particularizing those 
whose martyrdom was sullied in his opinion by any- 
thing unworthy of so honorable a calling. Now it is 
a well-known fact that follies and infirmities are often 
accompaniments of heroic self-devotion. The roll of 

13 See B. viii. 13 ; also, Mart, of Mart. Palest.l2)to omit particulars 
Pal. ch. 13. For Eusebius's com- both of calamities and of follies and 
mon way of giving only noted ex- dissensions that led to those ca- 
amples see, also, viii. 6 ; iii. 33 ; lamities, is quoted by Gibbon as 
v. preface; vi. 1, etc. That be- evidence against his honesty ; but, 
lievers were slaughtered in crowds in computing the number of Mar- 
has the testimony of Lactantius, tyrs (a matter upon which it bears 
xv., and Euseb. viii. 9, 11, etc. materially) the profession is con- 
Eusebius's profession (viii. 2 and veniently forgotten. 



406 HISTOEY OF THE CHURCH. [BK. JH. 

select tlie Palestine Martyrs, therefore, is, on every reason- 
able supposition, only a select list ; and bears probably 
the same relation to the whole number that suffered, 
as the names of officers in a gazette to the undistin- 
guished victims of the rank and file. The persecution 
was undoubtedly a mighty effort to crush Christian- 
ity. More than once the tyrants boasted that they 
had succeeded in the attempt. 14 That in such an en- 
deavor, continued for ten years, they accomplished 
nothing more than the death of some two thousand 
persons, is as contrary to reason as to the testimony 
of all early writers. 

The Iii the mean while Diocletian, having celebrated 

abdicate, his Persian triumph in Rome and returned to Nico- 
A. d. 305. . x , .,.„.. 

media, came to the rare determination of resigning 

his authority and retiring into the shades of private 
life. A tedious illness, with an ever-increasing sense 
of weariness and disgust, gave force to the philo- 
sophic reasons which may have led to this resolve. 
A greater weight was attributed by some, and with 
no little probability, to the ambitious urgency of his 
imperious son-in-law, the Csesar Galerius. However 
this may be, abdication is a dangerous experiment 
to one who has made a free use of absolute power. 
Diocletian resigned with a show of dignity. But 
it w^fe with undisguised reluctance that the West- 
ern Augustus Maximian, bound by a previous oath 
to his colleague, and, as Lactantius suggests, 15 influ- 

14 Trophies were set up at 15 The highly probable account 

Clunia in Spain and elsewhere : that Lactantius gives of these 

Diocletianus Jovius, Maximianus transactions, is somewhat injured 

Herculius, . . . nomine Christiano- by his throwing it (according to 

rum deleto . . etc.; or, super xtiti one classic precedents) into a dram- 

Christi ubique deleto, cultu Deo- atic form. Milman thinks that 

rum propagate Baron. Annal. the picture drawn by " the coarse 

an. 804. and unfriendly pencil of the au- 



CH. IX.] TIMES OF DIOCLETIAN. 407 

enced by the threats (£ Galerius, followed the ex- 
traordinary example, and retired to a solitude which. 
he eagerly left again as soon as a favorable opportu- 
nity presented. 

The empire of the world devolved upon Galerius £ olic y of 

•*■ -»- Galenus. 

in the East, and Constantius in the West. To recon- 
struct the quadruple scheme of Diocletian, it would 
have fallen to each of these two to nominate a Csesar. 
Galerius took the whole arrangement into his own 
hands. By a politic stroke, in which the feelings of 
the abdicating sovereigns seem to have been as little 
consulted as those of Constantius, he presented to 
the army two ignoble creatures of his own, under 
the title of Csesars. One of these, Severus, he sent severus. 
to Italy ; where he staid long enough to make him- 
self odious by a terrible system of exactions, but 
was soon confronted, overwhelmed and slain, in the 
revolt of the usurper Maxentius the son of Maxi- 
mian : which latter had been easily persuaded to re- 
sume the purple. The other, named Daza or as he 
was afterwards called Maximin, was commissioned Maximin. 
to tyrannize over Egypt and Syria. A third prize 
which Galerius had within easy reach, and which 
he was reserving for his old friend and comrade Li- 
cinius, was snatched from his eager grasp by the su- 
perior promptitude of young Constantine, the son of J ^. 
the Western Emperor, Constantius. This young man, stantine - 
born before his father had attained the rank of Caesar, 

thor of the Treatise" is inconsis- tatem suam aliena invidia vellet 

tent with " th'e profound subtlety" explere." Eutrop. ix. 26. To 

ascribed to Diocletian's character, this kind of character the por- 

But no profound subtlety is at- trait drawn by Lactantius is per- 

tributed to him. It is merely the fectly true. Indeed, it is true 

common-place cunning of laying enough to Diocletian's character, 

the blame of his cruel actions even as softened and excused by 

upon his counsellors : " qui severi- the skilful pen of Gibbon. 



408 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [BK. III. 

and deprived of all hopes of the succession by the 
new matrimonial arrangements which followed that 
event, 16 had attached himself to the service of Dio- 
cletian, and at the time of the abdication was one of 
the most promising officers of the army. Galerius 
was aware of his importance, and laid a skilful plan 
to secure him. But the young soldier was on the 
alert. Stealing a march on the crafty approaches 
of the tyrant, he sped from Nieomedia as fast as 
post-horses could carry him ; and arrived at Bou- 
logne just in time to accompany his father on an ex- 
pedition to North Britain, to receive at York a dying 
constan- blessing from his lips, and to be forced by the not 
elected by unwelcome violence of the armv into the adoption 

the army. " 

of the title of Augustus. The announcement of this 
was sent, with many plausible excuses, to the Eastern 
Emperor. He received it in grim acquiescence. Con- 
ceding to Constantine, however, only the secondary 
title of Caesar, he conferred the name of Augustus 
on his favorite Severus ; but, this latter soon going 
to wreck before the triumphant usurpation of Max- 

ncinius. entius, the honor finally devolved upon Licmius for 
whom he had from the first designed it. 

six heads. Thus the Roman world was partitioned among six 
masters : Galerius, holding a trembling balance be- 
tween two Augusti, Maximin and Licinius, in the 
East ; and the old warrior Maximian, nominally 
respected by Constantine and Maxentius, in the 
West: under all of whom, except Constantine, the 
edicts of persecution continued to be enforced against 

16 Constantius divorced Helena of Maximian. In the same way, 
the mother of Constantine, and Galerius had to marry Valeria 
married Theodora the daughter Diocletian's daughter. 



A. d. 308. 



CH. IX.] TIMES OF DIOCLETIAN. 4:09 

the Christians. But the number of oppressors was 
rapidly reduced by various reverses. 

In the East^Galerius giving himself up to dissolute l^lf 
living, fell a prey to that horrible and loathsome J a i?3n' 
disease, which is famous for having quelled the pride 
of two other distinguished persecutors, Herod the 
Great and Philip LI. of Spain. He was almost liter- 
ally eaten up of worms. 17 A tumor, badly healed, 
festered into a spreading sore, which became a nest 
of innumerable vermin and filled the whole Palace 
at ISTicomedia with its pestilential effluvia. In vain 
Apollo was applied to for relief. JSTurses and physi- 
cians could approach the sick man only at the peril 
of their lives. Under the torture of this fearful 
plague, his body visibly corrupting from day to day, 
but his mind still struggling with natural feelings of 
remorse, he at length put forth an edict of toleration, 
remarkable for its apologetic and almost penitent 
tone. 18 " It had been his wish," he declared, "that Edict of 
the Christians should be reclaimed from the folly of 
forming a separate society in the state, and should 
return to the customs of their fathers. Many had 
been put in peril of their lives, some had been 
punished with death. But, inasmuch as the greater 
part continued obstinate in their delusion, and were 
falling into a state in which they neither worshipped 
the gods nor served the Deity of the Christians, 
therefore it seemed best, in accordance with the 
uniform mildness and clemency of his reign, to grant 
them a certain indulgence ; that they might hold 
their assemblies as before, and entreat their God for 

1T Lactantius describes it with I8 Given at length in Lactan- 

a fearfal minuteness ; de Mart, tius, xxxiv., and Eusebius, Eccl. 

JPers. xxxiii. : also, Euseb. viii. 16. Hist. viii. 16. 
18 



410 



HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. 



[be:, hi. 



Maximin. 



A brief 
calm. 



the safety of the Emperor and the State as well as 
for their own, that prosperity and security might 
everywhere abound." % 

In the contest for empire between Maximin and 
Licinius which followed the tyrant's death, this tardy 
indulgence was of little avail to the Christians. 
Maximin, indeed, seemed for awhile to have re- 
lented ; and, encouraged by edicts from him similar 
to that of Galerius, the Christians came forth from 
their concealment with hymns of joy, and resumed 
the celebration of their sacred rites. The treacherous 
calm lasted hardly six months. At a hint from the 
Emperor petitions came in from the principal cities, 
that measures of severity might be resumed. Perse- 
cution began once more, but in a milder form : 
persuasion, intimidation and punishments short of 
death, being strongly recommended. 19 At the same 
time an effort was made to give greater dignity to 
pagan worship. Priests and high-priests, of decent 
moral character and of high social rank, were ap- 
Reform of pointed. A gorgeous ceremonial was devised. The 
old gods, revamped, as it were, with new attributes 
adopted from Christianity, were set up in splendid 
shrines, and propitiated by feasts and sacrifices and 
magical incantations. 

On the other hand, the Gospel was assailed with 
the weapons of ridicule. Forged acts of Pilate, 20 
full of blasphemies against Christ, were widely cir- 
culated, and taught to young persons in the schools. 
The dignity of dying for the Faith was denied to 
believers. Tortured and mutilated, with their eyes 



pagan 
worship 



Weapons 
of con- 
tempt. 



19 Many, however, were put to death; and among others Peter 
the Martyr, Bishop of Alexandria. See Euseb. Book ix. 

20 Euseb. ix. v. 



CH. IX.] TIMES OF DIOCLETIAN. 411 

put out, or branded with other marks of shame, they 
were hidden away in dungeons or banished to the 
mines. So elated was Maximin with the apparent 
success of his endeavors, — the gods smiling upon 
him, as he proclaimed, in teeming harvests, genial 
seasons, and in the unexampled prosperity of his 
dominions, — that he carried the religious war beyond conquest 
his own borders into the Christian kingdom of Ar- menia. 
menia, and succeeded in establishing the persecution 
there. 

But his confidence was soon shaken by a terrible Terrible 
series of reverses. First, his insatiable licentiousness 
inspired universal execrations: the eunuchs, who 
scoured the provinces for victims to his lusts, making 
the vile quest more odious by gratuitous insults and 
indignities. Tax-gatherers followed the eunuchs, 
and, if possible, were still more hated. Then came 
a general drought and an unprecedented famine. 
The rich were reduced to beggary, beggars were 
massacred or drowned. An awful pestilence fol- 
lowed close upon the famine. In the midst of these 
calamities the charity of believers was enabled to 
shine forth again. Amid despair and desolation charity 
they did their duty to the sufferers of every kind, christians. 
ISTot content to visit and relieve the sick, they fought 
with the street dogs for the abandoned bodies of the 
dying or the dead. At length, Heaven smiled once 
more upon the despairing provinces. Maximin, de- 
feated by Licinius, first turned his rage against the 
pagan priesthood who had incited him to civil war; 
then wandered wildly from place to place, attempt- 
ing to rally his resources; till at length taking 
poison, but not in sufficient quantity to destroy life 
at once, he was slowly eaten up by an internal fire, 



412 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [BK. HI. 

End of and so miserably perished. 21 Before his death he 
a. d. 3i3.' issued a new and ample edict of toleration and 
redress to the Christians; in which he apologized 
for himself, and laid all the severities of the perse- 
cution to the door of the officers and judges, 
church of The splendid Church of Tyre, demolished during 
the persecution, but now rebuilt on its old site with 
greater magnificence than ever, signalized in one 
place the restoration of Christian worship. The ex- 
ample was followed in other cities. The death of 
Maximin was not merely a deliverance of the 
Church ; it was accompanied everywhere with a 
joyful munificence, an uncalculating zeal in restor- 
ing her waste places, and a promptness of restitution 
on the part of the heathen, that showed her to have 
gained, even in things temporal, far more than she 
had lost. 
Maxentius In Italy and North Africa, Maxentius, the twin 
wSt? monster of Maximin, 22 a prodigy of superstition, 
cruelty, rapacity and lust, had in the earlier days 
of his usurpation pretended to favor the Christians. 
Having succeeded, however, in gaining the good- 
will of the army by largesses and flattery, and hav- 
ing by the aid of Maximian his father bafflecl all the 
efforts of Severus and Galerius, he gave himself over 
to the fiend of licentiousness, and became an object 
of abhorrence to all his subjects alike. Like Maxi- 
min he indulged in a wantonness of debauchery, 
which set all law and all social ties at defiance. 
The maid or matron that once attracted his eye, had 
no refuge from dishonor but in self-destruction. So- 

21 The horrible description of 9a Euseb. de Vita. Const i. 33- 
his end is given with much fulness 38; JEccl. Hist. viii. 14; Zosim. 
by Euseb. ix. 10. Hist. Nov. lib. ii. 






CH. IX.] TIMES OF DIOCLETIAN. 413 

phronia, a Christian lady, wife of the Prefect of the 
city, adopted this mode of escape. The tyrant's 
minions were ready imitators of his fonl example. 
To make his turpitude complete, the vague religious 
feeling which had inclined him at one time to favor 
the Church, led him finally into a mire of the most ™^°f er " 
grovelling and insane superstitions. Whether he 
persecuted directly for religion's sake, is somewhat 
doubtful. It is more probable that the sufferings of 
the Christians under his reign, were consequences of 
the general state of outlawry in which the edict of 
Diocletian had placed them, rather than of any par- 
ticular hostility on the part of the western tyrant. 

The old chief Maximian, who on his son's usurpa- End of 
tion had resumed the purple and the title of Augus- 
tus, and had been his main stay in military affairs, 
soon found his alliance unendurable, and took refuge 
with Constantine in Gaul. But the unhappy old 
man was a restless agitator. Twice detected in trea- 
son against his host and son-in-law — for Constantine 
had married his daughter Fausta, receiving with her 
as a dowry the coveted title of Augustus — he was 
allowed no other mercy than that of " free death," 
and perished ignominiously by his own hand. 

Maxentius -eagerly availed himself of this as a pre- war pro- 

clciimed.. 

text for a quarrel. He hated Constantine intensely ; 
and when the latter, with a zeal more creditable to 
his justice than to his humanity, followed up the 
death of his wife's father by erasing his titles, and 
throwing down his statues, the opportunity for a dis- 
play of filial piety was considered too good to be 
neglected. Maxentius immediately gave orders, 
throughout Italy and North* Africa, to overthrow 
the images of Constantine. In the contest that 



414 HISTOEY OF THE CHUECH. [BK. ILT. 

ensued, the latter did not wait to be attacked. With 

a promptitude and energy which entitle him to a 

high place among military leaders, he conducted his 

small army across the Cottian Alps ; routed the best 

generals of Maxentius in several well-contested fields, 

ofCo? anc ^ marcmn » steadily and rapidly towards Rome, 

?*?*«&• fi na, lty overwhelmed the usurper in a great battle 

under the walls of the city. Maxentius was found 

End of drowned in one of the marshes of the Tiber. Before 

Maxentius. 

he had left Rome for the decisive field, he had taken 
care to consult the Sibylline Books. On that day 
ran the answer of the prudent oracle, the enemy of 
the Romans shall perish. The Romans indeed re- 
joiced that their enemy had perished; and the ac- 
clamations which greeted the conqueror were those 
of men who had nothing more to lose, and conse- 
quently every thing to gain, from a change of mas- 
ters. 23 All this happened about a year before the 
death of Maximin. It was followed by an alliance 
between Constantine and Licinius, and by a series 
of events in the East, already in part related. 
constan- Thus Constantine in the West and Licinius in the 
Licinius. East, both of them favorably disposed towards the 
Christians, remained to divide the Roman world be- 
tween them, or, if necessary, to contest the supremacy 
by a renewal of bloody strife. 
Diocletian I n the mean while, the almost forgotten Diocletian 

at Salona. \ . . & 

had lived long enough m his chosen retreat at fealona, 
to taste the bitter fruits of the seeds of tyranny he 
had sown. Whether he troubled himself with the 
afflictions of the Empire is by no means certain. At 
all events, no influence for good was allowed him. 

23 Euseb. Vita Constant. Zosimns, Hist. ii. 



CH. IX.] TIMES OF DIOCLETIAN. 415 

It is probable, that he was soon made aware of the 
necessity of receiving passively and in silence what- 
ever might befall him. 

Valeria his daughter had been given in marriage Fate of his 

. ' ' wife and 

to Galerius, 24 to whom she bore no children, bnt per- daughter. 
formed faithfully the dnty of a mother to Candidi- 
anns, his illegitimate son. On the death of the Au- 
gustus, the beauty and wealth of the widowed 
Empress proved an irresistible bait to the brutal 
Maximin. But Valeria rejected his advances with 
becoming dignity. She was therefore sent into exile, 
with her property confiscated, her reputation blasted, 
her attendants subjected to the torture, and her fe- 
male friends put to death on foul and' false accusa- 
tions. When tidings of this came to Diocletian, he 
ventured to entreat of the monster that his daughter 
might be suffered to share his retreat at Salona, and 
comfort his last moments. His humble petition was His pe ti- 
in vain. Afterwards, on the triumph of Lieinius, a rejected. 
gleam of hope, founded on the debt of gratitude due 
from that conqueror to Galerius, induced the prin- 
cess, accompanied by her mother Prisca, to throw 
herself on his mercy and seek the protection of his 
court. She was the more easily led to this from 
learning that Candidianus was in favor there. She 
was soon undeceived. Candidianus, as also Severi- 
anus the son of Severus, had imperial blood in them, 
and were therefore put to death. Fearing a similar 
fate, the two empresses fled, in the disguise of peas- 
ants. After fifteen months of wandering from place 
to place, all Asia the meanwhile resounding with 
their woes, they were at length discovered and re- 

** Lactant. de Mart. Pers. 39-41. 



/end, A. d. 
313. 



416 HISTOEY OF THE CHURCH. [be.. III. 

cognized at Thessalonica. Their doom had been 
long since prononnced. In the presence of a great 
crowd of people, they were both beheaded, and 
their bodies thrown into the sea. 
?n J T n u Such was the sad end of Diocletian's family. Of 
his own latter days little is known beyond an uncer- 
tain rumor, that, maddened 25 by the ingratitude and 
neglect of all whom he had benefited, and by the 
pitiable fate of the few who might be supposed to 
have cherished some affection for him, he withdrew 
from the troubles of life, as he had fled from those 
of empire, by a voluntary act. His death, however, 
has been attributed by some to dropsy, by some to 
poison, and by others to a protracted state of insom- 
nia in which he was unable to take food or rest. 26 



CHAPTEK X. 

THE VICTORY OF CONSTAOTINE. 

The victory of Const antine was the beginning of 
the triumph of the Christian Keligion. When he first 
announced the bold plan of attempting with hardly 

25 Milman and Gibbon make humorous philosophy he display- 
light of the story of Diocletian's ed in his retirement, and his fa- 
madness. Eusebius and Lactan- mous bon mot, that no man who 
this both mention it. The latter cau raise his own cabbages ought 
says that, after his long illness to covet the cares of empire, are 
previous to his abdication, he re- not inconsistent with such inter- 
red, 6? tf no* wAo%;. /or «< cer- mittent insanity. Witty men are 
tain times he was 'insane, but at not necessarily sane men. 
other times in his senses. The 26 Lactant. xlii. 



CH. X.] THE VICTORY OF CONSTANTINE. 417 

more than forty thousand available soldiers, 5 the con- 
quest of Italy defended by an army of at least four 
times the number, his friends remonstrated, and his 
officers could not refrain from murmurs of disappro- 
bation. 2 But the boldness of this scheme was as noth- 
ing, compared with that which he was destined to 
undertake and to achieve. It was no less than to ab- constan- 

tine takes 

jure the old traditions of the Empire, and to identify the chns- 
himself with an apparently broken and certainly un- 
military party, which neither in his army, nor in Italy, 
nor in Eome, nor in the Empire at large, was of any 
political importance ; and which could nowhere claim 
to be more than a respectable minority of the popu- 
lation. To ascribe such a venture to mere political 
calculation, is to affirm a greater wonder than any of 
those recorded in legendary fiction. Kor can we set 
his conduct to the account of any deep affection for 
the Gospel, or for its persecuted followers. His life 
was hardly that of a true Christian man. Indeed, he 
never professed to be other than an outside pillar of 
the Church ; and his baptism was deferred till just 
before his death. These things considered, Constan- 
tine's own account 3 of the matter seems more simple 

1 Zosimus gives him eighty inussantibus, sed omen aperte ti- 
thousand men in all; but, as Gib- mentibus." 

bon shows, not more than half that 3 Euseb. de vit. Constant, i. 26- 

number could have been spared 30, 36 : Socrat. Bed. Hist. i. 2. 

for the campaign in Italy. Lactantius mentions only, that 

2 A heathen panegyrist says : " Constantine was told in a dream 
" What God, what present Deity to put the sign on the arms of his 
inspired thee, when almost all thy soldiers :" de Mort. Pers. 44 ; which 
generals not only murmured in is an addition, not a contradiction, 
secret, but openly expressed their to the story as related by Euse- 
fears, against the advice of men, bius. So the heathen JSTazarius, 
against the warnings of auspices," in Panegyr. ad C. 14: "It was 
etc., etc. : " omnibus fere Comiti- bruited all through the Gauls, 
bus et Ducibus, non solum tacite that armies were seen which de- 

18* 



418 



HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. 



[bk. m. 



His course 
explained. 



and more credible than any of the theories which 
have been framed in explanation of his extraordinary 
conduct. 

From his father Constantius and his mother Helena, 
and from his own observation of the terrible doom of 
those who had opposed themselves to the Gospel, he 
had imbibed as much of Christian faith as a liberal 
and sagacious but not scrupulous mind could be ex- 
pected to receive. This was not much ; but it was 
enough to make him ponder the weakness of human 
strength, and to pray for the support of an overruling 
Power. Maxentius, under the same circumstances, 
had resorted to horrible sacrifices and demoniacal in- 
cantations. Constantine, too enlightened for such su- 
perstitions, could only turn with vague desire, though 
with little of the faith that springs from love, towards 



clared they were divinely sent," 
etc. : which, again, is not a con- 
tradiction, but a popular exagger- 
ation. Many modern critics, such 
as Milman, Neander, Gieseler, 
Schrookh,Manso, ascribe the won- 
der partly to excited imagination, 
partly to the appearance of some 
brilliant cross-like phenomenon in 
the heavens : a mode of explana- 
tion as hard to understand, and 
not a whit easier to believe, than 
the original simple facts as related 
by Constantine. It gives new 
names to things, however, and 
has the merit of being thought 
philosophical. As to Milman's 
and Mosheim's objection, that the 
story presents " the meek and 
peaceful Jesus" as " a God of bat- 
tles ;" there is a sufficient answer 
in Isaiah, xlv. 1-7. It is the Lord 
who "holds the right hand" of 
the conqueror, " to subdue na- 
tions before him," and to work 



deliverance for His people. God 
is in history, and in the world, as 
well as in Grace. It has also been 
urged, that if the appearance had 
been really supernatural, Constan- 
tine's conversion would have been 
more genuine than it seems to 
have been. But this is to mistake 
the operation of " signs and won- 
ders." Their utmost effect is to 
convince the mind (bs in the case 
of Simon Magus), not necessarily 
to convert the heart. As to the 
particular wonder under discus- 
sion, the position of the Church 
at that time was a digitus vindice 
nodus. Believers everywhere had 
been ten years (nay, three hun- 
dred years) crying to the Lord 
for deliverance. That the deliv- 
erance, when it came, should be 
signalized by extraordinary to- 
kens of the Hand that wrought it, 
seems to me a rational as well as 
religious belief. 



' CH. X.] THE VICTORY OF COKSTANTINE. 419 

the great Deity whose hand he recognized in the start- 
ling events of his times, the mysterious God of the 
Christians. It was then, according to his own testi- His vision, 
mony, that a wonderful vision was vouchsafed. About 
midday or a little after, there appeared in the heavens, 
just above the sun, the trophy of a Cross of light, bear- 
ing the inscription, By This Conquer. This was wit- 
nessed also by the whole army. In his sleep the night 
following, Christ appeared to him with the same sign, 
and commanded him to have a standard made in the 
same image, and to use it in all engagements against 
his enemies. In accordance with this instruction the 
far-famed Labarum was made ; and when the con- p® 

7 Labarum. 

queror entered Rome, his first act was to set up in 
that proud city the trophy of the Cross, surmounted 
by the JP, so often conspicuous afterwards in the van 
of the Roman armies. 

The readiness with which the Romans acquiesced R°me sub- 

i n i mlts to 

m this momentous revolution, is not less wonderful the cross, 
than the boldness and decision with which it was 
brought about. That zeal for polytheism was by no 
means extinct in the great metropolis, had been re- 
cently shown by a furious outbreak in vindication of 
the honor of the popular goddess Fortuna. Some 
soldier, it appears, had uttered a word depreciatory 
of the idol. 4 It had required the utmost efforts of 
Maxentius to put an end to the tumult that ensued. 
But on the entrance of Const antine into the city, 
this zeal for paganism seems suddenly to have died 
away. Amid a general approbation, a sect never 
strong in numbers, generally disliked, and for three 
hundred years depressed, whose foremost Bishop had 

4 Whether this soldier was a Christian is not mentioned : Zo- 
sim. Hut. ii. 13. 



420 



HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. 



[bk. III. 



General 
rejoicing. 



lately been forced to act the part of groom B in the 
imperial stables, is suddenly elevated to the height 
of power ; the traditions of a thousand years or 
more are quietly set aside; and an entirely new 
order of things is triumphantly initiated. 

However all this may be explained by political or 
philosophic reasons, it is not to be wondered at that 
the Christians should have regarded it in the light of 
a great deliverance ; a divine intervention the more 
welcome that it came at their hour of utmost need. 
And such undoubtedly was their universal feeling. 
From the one end of Christendom to the other there 
was one harmonious cry : The Lord hath done great 
things for us, whereof we rejoice ! Even the cold and 
phlegmatic historian of the period, the cautious and 
(if all reports be true) timorous Eusebius, 6 was warm- 



6 Such is said to have been the 
punishment of Pope Marcellus : 
Anastas. Vit. Marcell. Eusebius 
refers to this or some similar case 
in Mart, of Palest, xii. 

G Eusebius, surnamed Pamphi- 
lus, and known as "the father 
of Church history," was not only 
a man of great industry and learn- 
ing, with every facility for ac- 
quiring a just knowledge of the 
events he describes, but singular- 
ly cautious, skeptical, without a 
spark of the dangerous light of 
genius, and little in harmony with 
the enthusiasm of the age in which 
he lived. Born in Palestine about 
the year 259, and educated in the 
latitudinarian school of Ori<> - en 
and his disciples, he kept within 
the pale of orthodoxy, but sym- 
pathized with those who were out 
of the pale. He was imprisoned 
during the great persecution ; 
but having been let off without 



scars, he was both privately sus- 
pected and publicly accused (on 
insufficient grounds, however) of 
having purchased his immunity 
by dishonorable concessions. 
When the peace came, he was 
made Bishop of Csesarea. In the 
Arian strife he shuffled a little, 
but finally subscribed to the Ni- 
cene Creed. He was a favorite 
of Constantine, and on the depo- 
sition of Eustathius of Antioch, 
was offered that See ; but pru- 
dently declined the dangerous 
honor. On the whole, judging 
him, not by the severe rule of 
the early Church, but by a char- 
ity fifteen hundred years older 
and proportionably more indul- 
gent, he was a moderate and pru- 
dent, and (so far as we can jud.^e) 
a pious and good man. His 
credit as a historian deservedly 
stands high. His prejudices were 
for the most part against that 



CH. X.] THE VICTORY OF COKSTANTINE. 421 

ed up into a glow of sympathetic feeling. His Pane- 
gyric on the Kebuilding of the Churches shows, in 
its very extravagance of language, that the joy of 
the day could be content with no moderate expres- 
sions. The general delight, in fact, was a sort of in- 
toxication. The cry was no longer, " We have heard 
with our ears what our forefathers have told us ;" 
but, " As we have heard so have we seen in the city 
of the Lord of Hosts, in the city of our God. 5 ' The 
destruction, root and branch, within so short a space 
of time, of so many powerful oppressors, could not 
but create a feeling of awe and admiration. And, 
happily, this feeling was one in which the heathen 
could take part. They had been sufferers with the 
Christians; they had reason to rejoice with them. 
They could join in the exulting cry: 7 "Where now 
are the mighty names so famous among the nations? 
Where are the Jovii and Herculii, titles so insolent- Causea of 

joy to the 

ly assumed by Diodes and Maximian, and so piti- freshen. 

party, which finally proved dom- when he omits any facts of that 

inant in the Church ; and where kind, is a strong- proof of his 

they come in, he has not the scrupulous fidelity ; and it would 

rhetorical skill to conceal them, be an improvement on the general 

His way of relating Constantine's character of history, if all histo- 

vision and similar wonders, shows rians were to adopt the same rule, 
that credulity was not among his r Lactant. de Mort. Pers. 1., lii. 

failings. Gibbon objects to him, The abominable character of these 

that in two places of his history tyrants as described by the two 

he avows an intention to record Church historians is fully borne 

only the transactions that he out by the heathen Zosimus : Hist. 

deemed creditable to the Church, ii. It is remarkable, by the way, 

Whoever will read those passages that Gibbon and Milman, who 

(Lib. viii. 2, and Mart, of Palest, take every opportunity to dis- 

12) will see, that he merely de- credit the two Church historians, 

clines to particularize certain refer to Zosimus — whose fanatical 

scandals, which, however, he fully hatred of Christianity leads him 

mentions in the gross, and in a to the most absurd statements — 

way more damaging on the whole without a word of censure or of 

than if he had given the details, caution. See Gibbon, ch. xvi., 

His care to apprise the reader and Milman's notes. 



422 HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. [be. Hi. 

fully disgraced by their infamous successors? The 
Lord hath destroyed them and wiped them from the 
earth. It is the Lord's triumph, the victory of the 
Lord. He hath looked down upon the earth. His 
flock, torn and scattered by ravening wolves, He 
hath brought together and healed. The wicked 
beasts, which trampled down His pastures and dissi- 
pated His folds, He hath utterly exterminated !" It 
was, in fact, a triumph of humanity. And if Chris- 
tians carefully collected the particulars of the horri- 
ble end of the oppressors, "lest either they should 
be forgotten, or lest some future historian should 
corrupt the truth, by passing over in silence their 
Exaltation sins against God, and God's judgments upon them ;" 
and ex- and if in this we can discern a little excess of natural 
exultation : it is but just to bear in mind, that the 
early Christians were men of like passions with our- 
selves, but tried in a way that passes our experience, 
• and almost our conceptions. The real wonder is, 
that a triumph so great, so sudden and so unexpect- 
ed, led to no acts of violent reprisal. A victory of 
such magnitude, and yet so little abused, is nowhere 
else recorded in the history of mankind. 
The vie- At the present day we can see that this first vic- 
SS tory of Christianity was not so much a fulfilment, 
only ' as a type or earnest, of that subjection of the king- 
doms of the world, which after so many ages of 
varied conflict is still but a matter of patient faith 
and hope. It was not the end of war. It was the 
beginning of a new and more complicated struggle. 
As, in the first victorious stage of the exodus from 
Egypt, the Israelites had only to " stand still and see 
the salvation of the Lord," 8 but in later stages were 

8 Exod. xiv. 13. 



CH. X.] THE VICTOEV OF CONSTANTINE. 423 

obliged to use tlieir own arms ; or, as in the conquest 
of the seven nations, Jericho the type-city was taken 
without a blow from man, but, in the capture of Ai 
and other places the People — having corrupted 
themselves by taking of "the accursed thing" 9 — 
were compelled to resort continually to the use of 
human weapons : so it has proved in the militant 
progress of the Church. The first great victory was 
a free gift of God : a victory of simple faith. The 
people stood still and saw the Lord work. They 
quietly waited till the bulwarks of Roman hea- 
thenism crumbled and fell before them. But since a warfare 
that time, corrupted more or less with the wealth of elements. 
the first conquest, it has been comparatively a war- 
fare of mixt elements : human strength, human 
policy, spoils of Ai, snares of Gibeon, and that 
root of all the evil " the Babylonish garment," 
concealing as it were the Lord's arm from view, and 
making the Church almost undistinguishable from 
the world. 

The symptoms of this change were not slow in signs of 
appearing. Almost the first greeting that came to 
the weak faith or to the politic calculations of the 
victor, was from a broken and distracted Chris- 
tianity. The mad schism of the Donatists ap- 
pealed to an earthly conqueror to settle spiritual 
disputes. 10 The most desperate and bloody wars 11 

9 Josh. vii. trouble there was the schism of 

10 Constantine's edict, on this Meletius, with the outbreak of 
occasion, is given with many Arianism, quarrels among the 
others in Euseb. Eccl. Hist. Bishops, and innumerable other 
lib. x. troubles, to shake the faith of a 

11 The violence of the Circum- new convert. The divine caution, 
celliones and the religious wars "Blessed is he whosoever shall 
in Africa are vividly described not be offended in Me," was never 
in Milman's Hist, of Christianity, more needed than in the moment 
iii. 1. In addition to the Donatist of the first great victory. 



a new era. 



424 



HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. 



[be:, in. 



Licinius 
led to 
favoi* 
Chris- 
tianity. 



Edicts of 
Restitu- 
tion, 
A. d. 313. 



War 

between 
the two 
Emperors, 
A. D. 315. 



that troubled Const antine's reign, were levied 
against him in the name of the religion he had 
adopted. Similar difficulties encountered Licinius 
in the East ; and, if he had any faith, contributed 
to shake it. 

This latter Emperor, in his contest with Maximin 
previously narrated, had inclined to the Christian 
cause from motives similar to those by which Con- 
stantine had been determined. He could put no 
confidence in the gods of Galerius and Maxentius. 
An alliance with Constantine, cemented by a mar- 
riage with his sister Constantia which took place at 
Milan not long after the overthrow of Maxentius, 
helped to commit him more decidedly in the same 
direction. In addition to this, he is said to have had 
a dream just before his decisive battle with Maxi- 
min, which induced him to pray to the Most High, 
and in His Name to cope with an army twice the 
number of his own. However this may be, his vic- 
tory was followed by edicts, 12 not merely of tolera- 
tion but of the most ample restitution. Churches, 
cemeteries and property of all kinds were to be 
restored fully and without delay. In return, Chris- 
tians were to pray that the Divine favor, already so 
signally experienced by the Emperor, might be con- 
tinued for all time to him and his successors. 

The war that soon broke out from the mutual 
jealousy of the two Emperors, put an end for the 
time being to this happy state of things. 13 , Constan- 



12 Lactant. de Mort. Peru, xlviii ; 
Euseb. x. 5. The edict from 
Milan had been drawn up pre- 
viously to the victory over Maxi- 
min; but was not put forth in the 
East till after that event. As the 



one given by Euseb. refers to a 
previous one not extant, Licinius 
probably made some additions to 
the original drawn up at Milan. 

13 Zosimus lays the blame of 
this war to the perfidy and am- 



CH. X.] THE VICTORY OF CONSTANTINE. 425 

tine's vigor proved superior, in two fiercely contested 
battles, to the tried skill and more numerous forces 
of his veteran adversary. A hollow peace ensued. 
The victor was confirmed in his allegiance to Chrib- 
tianity. The vanquished, sorely galled by his defeat 
and irritated continually by the praises too lavishly 
bestowed upon his rival, began to hate the cause 
which self-interest alone had induced him to take up. 
His wrath w T as freely vented upon the Churches and 
the Clergy. He accused them of praying for Con- 
stantine more earnestly than for him. Persecution New 

" outrages. 

began once more to lower upon the East. The as- 
semblies of the faithful appeared again in the light 
of conspiracies. Synods were forbidden. Even the 
favorite work of charity, the ministering to those in 
prison, could be performed only at the risk of shar- 
ing the doom of malefactors. In some places, 
Churches were demolished. In others, Bishops were 
made away with in secret. In short, Maximin and 
Maxentius seemed to have revived in the person of 
an old man more able than those tyrants, but not 
less cruel or licentious. At length a breach with second 

War 

Constantine, in which the latter perhaps made zeal 
for Christianity a cloak for his own ambitious views, 
accompanied with prodigious preparations both by 
sea and land, threatened the exhaustion of what re- 
mained of the resources of the Empire. Constantine 
proved once more victorious. The great battle of 
Hadrianople shattered the land forces of Licinius. 
The siege and capture of Byzantium involved the 
ruin of his navy. A vigorous rally was followed by 

bition of Constantine. On such motives are concerned, to attach 
points party prejudices were too much weight to the testimony of 
strong to allow us, in cases where either heathen or Christian writers. 



426 



HISTOKY OF THE CHUKCH. 



[bk. m. 



End of 
Licinius, 
A. d. 324. 



Constan- 
tine sole 
emperor. 



He gives 
God the 
glory. 



an overwhelming defeat at Chrysopolis, now called 
Scutari ; and the flight and ignominious submission 
of the tyrant, with his pardon at the instance of Con- 
stantia his wife, proved but the forerunners of his 
summary execution, on such pleas of state necessity 
as a victorious monarch is seldom at a loss to find. 

Such was the end of Diocletian's policy. After 
thirty-seven years of divided rule, with incalculable 
losses, horrors and calamities, the Roman world was 
once more united, and the first Christian Emperor 
reigned with universal and undivided sway. 

Constantine attributed his victory, as usual, to the 
power of the Deity of the Christians. And this, so 
far as we have the means of judging, was for a while 
at least the sum of his religion. His clear and hardy 
intellect, thoroughly awake (as was the case with 
the heathen mind in general 14 ) to a sense of that 
awful Nemesis which rules in the affairs of dynasties 
and nations, had been led to identify this great and 
mysterious power with the cause of a universally 
hated and persecuted sect. He had in some way 
perceived that the power of Divine retribution was 
on their side. Their God was more mighty than the 
gods of the persecutors. This he saw as a simple 
fact ; and to that fact as seen in the sphere of politi 
cal enterprise he readily submitted. Having always 
believed — to use his own expression — " that the best 



14 The reader of Homer, Hero- 
dotus, iEschylus and even Plu- 
tarch, knows how deep and real 
was this belief in a divine power 
of retribution, sure-footed though 
sometimes slow, among the an- 
cient heathen. It was the divine 
witness in the heathen conscience 
to the unity of the Godhead. The 



barrenness of mind which recog- 
nizes no Providence in History, 
no controlling Power, is peculiar 
to modern unbelief; and is con- 
ceivable only under such circum- 
stances as those alluded to in the 
Epistle to the Hebrews, v. 4-8. 
For some interesting facts on Con- 
stantine's belief, see Gieseler, §56. 



CH. X.] THE VICTORY OF CONSTANTINE. 427 

and noblest course of action is, before any thing is msmie 

' d ° of action. 

undertaken, to provide as far as possible for a secure 
result" be watched the almighty Hand which was 
then shaping the world's destiny, and that Hand he 
followed as the only sufficient pledge of security and 
success. 

Such a faith, sometimes degenerating into a mere inteiiect- 

5 fe & ua l f a ith. 

fatalism and sometimes rising to the height of a 
sublime confidence in God, is characteristic of all 
great instruments of political or social revolutions ; 
and is consistent with gross ignorance of the Gospel 
and gross negligence of its precepts. Men of this 
kind are often hard, shrewd and selfish in all second- 
ary matters. But in view of the great ends of their 
vocation, they are unsparing of themselves, enthusi- 
astic and even fanatical, seldom descending to the 
littleness of prudential calculations on their own ac- 
count. Their private character, therefore, is always 
more or less of an enigma. In the case of Constan- 
tine, his later years were subject to a series of Divine 
visitations, which, so far as we may reverentially 
look into the secret purposes of God, seem to have 
been intended to lead him from a political into a 
personal knowledge of the Truth; and which, we 
may charitably hope, were not without effect. The 
Nemesis which he dreaded, and which in state affairs 
he so carefully propitiated, was allowed to enter his 
own house. 15 Dark crimes and darker judgments 

15 See Gibbon's Decline and Fall, Book of the recording Angel, of 

ch. xviii. Euseb. Vit. Constant, the lives of Solomon and David. 

iv. 60-64. It is instructive to Eusebius is all eulogy. We feel, 

contrast the Life of Constantine nevertheless, that he belittles his 

by the courtly Bishop of Osesarea, hero by his fulsome praises. On 

with the simple inspired records, the other hand, what dignity of 

transcripts as it were from the character beams through the 



Trials and 
sorrows. 



of a new 



428 HISTOKY OF THE CHUECH. [be. m. 

caused his palace to be haunted with horrors worthy 
of the old tragic drama; and the life, which rose 
with so stern a beauty upon the profligate Roman 
world, 16 went down amid a gloom, in which a late 

His end. baptism and perhaps a genuine though late repent- 
ance are the only evidence of a hope in keeping with 
the faith so long professed. 

But these are questions which history is incompe- 

The type tent to settle. Constantine was simply a great in- 

of a. npOT At/ CD 

strument in the hand of God. To God he gave the 
glory, by a firm advocacy of the Gospel, if not in the 
better way of a consistent Christian life. He stands, 
therefore, as not merely the introducer, but in some 
sort the type, of that new era of Church growth, in 
which, while the root of faith remained, its true 
development was to be mixt, and almost inextricably 
entangled, with the weeds and thorns and tares of 
the elements of the world. In him began, in short, 
the great problem and enigma of our modern Chris- 
tendom, our modern civilization. 

blotted history of those ancient history) of the fanatical heathen 
Hebrew kings ! If Constantine's Zosimns: Histories Nova, etc. 
crimes and faults had been as 10 Among the virtues conceded 
honestly given by Eusebius, we to him, chastity is prominent; 
should probably have found more among his vices, cruelty. Con- 
to admire in him than we can now sidering the fearful profligacy of 
find warrant for. There is a the times, a man in his position 
counterpoise, however, to the ex- could hardly maintain the former 
travagant eulogies of Eusebius, of these, without falling more or 
in the elegant lampoon (entitled less into the latter. 



THE END. 



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■ 




